'Rugged' smartphone screen unresponsive after 2 months, not honouring warranty
My 'rugged' smartphone Ulefone Armor 8's screen became totally unresponsive after 2 months despite it not being dropped, submerged or having its screen cracked. The phone was within the 180 day warranty period but Banggood staff refused a full refund and instead proposed local repairs which voided the warranty, or shipping back to China for 3 months on the hope they might fix it without charging me more. Both options were likely to leave me in a worse position, losing more money. Our correspondence is copied below. 2021-01-16 16:49:49 Customer Screen unresponsive to touch after two and a half months of use. Using the side buttons I was able to press the power button and up button to do a factory reset but the screen is still unresponsive. Would be grateful for refund 2021-01-18 02:08:09 Banggood We suggest you to ask your local repair store whether they could repair the phone. After you have the phone repaired, please offer the receipt to us,we will refund repair cost for you only if the cost is less than AUD 92. Please note that after your phone is disassembled and repaired in your side,the phone would not enjoy warranty any more. 2021-01-18 19:25:12 Customer Thanks for your message but that is not acceptable. You are asking me to voluntarily void the warranty which I don't agree to. The warranty is for 180 days and this 'rugged' phone has broken within 70 days. I'll leave negative reviews for Banggood and Ulefone unless you propose a better remedy, such as: Pay for necessary repairs without voiding warranty or ruining water-proof feature of phone; or Full refund. 2021-01-19 02:02:12 Banggood because item is delivered over one month ,we cannot arrange full refund or resend new item,we can only offer reapir service.If you choose return for repair.Customer need to cover the shipping cost. Manufacturer technical staff will check the phone problem, if the phone problem due to the physical damages and damages caused by incorrect usage, you need to pay for any cost incurred during the process of repair. But if the problem is cause by the phone itself, they will repair it. Broken motherboard and broken screen replacing is not in the scope of free repair policy. If you need to pay for the repair fee, we will inform you inadvance.Normally it would take around 12weeks for repairing.When the item repaired after being checked by manufacturer,we will send it back to you. If you accept this solution,you need to confirm with us about the return address.