Posts by Mark Richardson

Warranty versus contract

But what's the warranty period on the phone ? 12 months I'd guess.

Is this another phone and contract package that is storing up trouble for the user ? I'm currently onto my fourth iPhone after three warranty replacements. The last of these replacements was awarded to me in Apple's "grace period" (i.e. the three week period after the initial 12 months has run out). A week later and I'd have been £140 out of pocket for a "repair" (read "replacement") or faced with using a cheap handset for the remaining 5 months of my contract. And, no, none of these were down to poor care on my part, they were all either known manfacturing faults or random component failures.

Thinking back over my pre-iphone mobile ownership it was rare for me to have a phone that lasted much longer than 12 months before something went wrong. It never mattered though because the contracts were always 12 months.

Now with these high priced handsets the carrier needs a longer contract to make money but it puts the consumer in the position of potentially having 6-12 months of a high priced contract and a knackered phone.

I understand the reason for the contract length but surely the mobile carrier should either be offering higher priced 12 month contracts or warning you of the warranty versus contract issue when you take out the contract. Maybe they could even offer a warranty extension as standard. Or maybe the manfacturers could build things that actually last.