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Cape Town - A South African who bought a top-end smartphone is frustrated after the device malfunctioned and the service provider response was poor.
Fin24 user Ricardo Harvey waited for a long time to replace his old Samsung Galaxy SII and was excited to be among the first of his friends to buy the Sony Xperia Z1 Compact.
The baby brother of the Z1 is an ideal fit for people who want to the power of the Z1, but prefer a smaller screen size.
However, for Harvey, the joy of ownership deteriorated quickly when the display began acting up.
"The phone started misbehaving, erratic screen behaviour etc. I took it to Cell C to send to Sony, instructed them that a simple factory reset will not solve the issue as I tried it already", he told Fin24.
Persistent problem
However, when the phone returned, the issue had still not been resolved.
"When the phone was returned it still had the same problem. I contacted the repair centre directly to find out what type of repair was carried out and they told me that they did a factory reset. When I asked why they did a reset when I already said that it wouldn't work they stated that technicians only have a limited amount of time to diagnose a problem."
"He then instructed me to send the phone back to them and mark it for his attention which I did. After some time I called to follow up and I was informed by Sony that the phone is on its way back to Cape Town, I asked what repairs were carried out and they stated that a factory reset was done again", a frustrated Harvey said.
Sony eventually replaced the faulty screen, but despite that, the device continued to give problems. Harvey uploaded a video of the phone to YouTube to illustrate the phone malfunctioning.
Check out the video:
On Tuesday, the smartphone was once again collected for repair, and Harvey is hopeful that the repair will be successful this time. In the meantime, he resurrected his old Samsung.
The touch screen display has become essential in modern smartphones. Before sending your problem device in for repairs, try removing SIM and memory cards before resetting the device.
Smartphone users can also download smartphone hardware checking apps to investigate the functioning of the processor, RAM availability, battery and accelerometer information.
This case though, highlights a problem for consumers in SA: It's easy to buy a smartphone, but after sales service is often as important as the initial purchase.
Smartphone vendors don't always have the capacity to have repair or walk-in centres throughout the country and often can't respond to problems as they do in more developed countries.
In Japan, for example, Sony through operator NTT Docomo offers replacement smartphones while a repair is being undertaken.
Have you had any repair issues with your latest smartphone? Let us know.
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