[Supa_Fly1]

Hi Everyone,

So we're all enjoying our new Z10's and still marveling over what BB10 offers and is still ready to bring new highlights to us all down the road. However this brought me to a thought that many of us may not be considering, hopefully not just yet.

Warranty Support.

Warranty and support is the bain of pain for any manufacturer and mobile wireless provider, between the complaining customer calling into the provider for troubleshooting, to walking into the store and complaining (many of which are overzealous - what kind of an adult yells at a teen), to the whole in store replacement or phone support shipping a replacement unit.

The worst experience which I'm sure many of you BlackBerry faithful have faced is walking into a store (especially with Rogers Wireless), and getting a replacement BB that has off-colour white backlight on the screen or keys (or have keys lit), cosmetics are not just less than stellar but a clear visual queue showing previous owner abuse/TLC (depending on your you look at it). Many of use would like a NEW device as a replacement within the warranty, and quite frankly considering the contracts of 2 yrs in the USA/UK and 3yrs in Canada (and NO that length of time for a $50/mth does not equal the price of a $500/650 phone) we should have a NEW Z10/Q10.

So this brings me to think of 2 things .... the hardware and of course BlackBerry's stance of customer support - end customer not the wireless carrier. Physical keys are going to be prown to wear and tear or scuff marks ... I've seen this time and time again in support for various corporations I've worked for in the past. Issues such as track ball failure, manual replacement repair done by myself and colleagues, then RIM claiming this voids warranty, to keys failing to be registered as being pressed, and lately 9900/9780 especially, and 9790 the screen going blank permanently - not water damage, or drop damage, no sw found via Loader & JLCmdr. Corporations can afford a replacement device at full retail several times within a year per user, no big deal, however those of us that pay for our individual phone lines and hardware are not gonna want to go through this as many times and get a "warranty replacement" crapo device.

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple back in 2000, he made a few things very clear, beyond changing the board and firing those lazy with no drive or passion for the companies success - I'm honestly glad Thorsten has that drive & passion for BlackBerry. The main key point was recognizing ... "Apple hasn't really done much to be custodians to our customer".

Steve made it a HUGE point to make the customer first! Apple is a HUGE corporation but acts like the small mom & dad store down the street that you prefer, that you choose to goto vs the big mall store for just even the simplest thing - EVEN if it costs a few dollars more!

WHY do we prefer the small family store down the street?! Is it because of customer service, or because its simply convenient because its closer to home when needing to shop starting from home? Its because they KNOW you ... because they take time to ask you how was your day, LISTEN to YOU, not follow a script to get you IN and OUT quickly.

Many of you are Windows users and you have the plethora of choice and least cost of $$. Awesome for you! Today I bought my fourth Mac computer ever - growing up I've always wanted one since grade four (1982) but my family could never afford one. Today, I got to Eaton Centre at 9:05, and they still where able to sell me a Mac. While I was waiting, a short while for the Mac to come out on the floor, I was asked - "What's your name?" "how is your night going?" (with my name going forward of course), "Is this your first Mac?" "Are you liking the experience or anything you wish from Windows?" (this caught me off guard to be honest).

The point being, I wasn't rushed, I felt like a person not a sales number! We all know about Apple's stellar warranty policy for iPhone ... there is no other in the competition that compares, bar NONE! I want this to change for BlackBerry, and for us the end user that has put our faith in the company's future, putting #BB10Believe or BlackBerry By Choice with our dollars, not our hands typing on a keyboard nor our mouths speaking it to others that have chosen another platform for their needs.

Looking at the BlackBerry Z10 alone ... you kind of see that BlackBerry is planning for cheaper repair costs. From the screen bezel - it looks to be easily serviceable from the rest of the unit, to the unit under the battery. BlackBerry's COO must've done a hard and fantastic job with supply chain, but also for product longevity. I can only pray this is the same with the Q10.

BlackBerry needs to recognize those of us, the end user as customers, not just the wireless providers. It would be nice for BlackBerry to utilize their provider partnerships globally to allow for BNIB or LNIB warranty replacements throughout the 1 year warranty - a SUPER bonus would be throughout the length of the contract. To be honest I'd pay another $100 just to have this - if I could do so within the year.

I'm curious how all of you feel about these thoughts, how previous warranty support from RIM affected you positively or negatively. Thanks for reading this.

[geofflindorff]

Great topic, I was a loyal BB user last 12 years and pre ordered a Z10 which I picked up on Feb 5th. 31 days later it stopped sending email which was more than a little inconvienent. I spent 3 hours on tech support (Belll's tech support for 1 hours was superior to BB) and performed the same requests for both. BB reported that the address book was not loading (DNS?) so after my trip I dropped off for service at Bell's store. The person suggested it would be 5-7 days, even a email to me to confirm that.
I was not aware that it is regularly 5 - 7 weeks for repair and you have no way of getting an update as to where the device is in the queue.
I now wish I went with another manufacture, say like Apple that replaces phones 6 months later (a co-worker) just had that experience. So if you are thinking of HW, look at how it is serviced. I did spend another 2 hours trying to find out where it was but was told the company providing repairs does not respond to email and Bell does not have a phone number.

Can someone please confirm or provide some truth to what is the real SLA and what to expect for service? Wishing I had a Z10 again with better warranty SLAs

[Vector-SS]

Yeah Apple's warranty is ridiculously good, and it's not even just for phones - it's the entire lineup! You literally just walk into any Apple store and get your product fixed/exchanged, no questions asked.

In my case, having bought my Z10 from overseas, I'm constantly living in the fear of something happening to it because it will surely be a headache if something was to happen to it.

[Supa_Fly1]

Yeah Apple's warranty is ridiculously good, and it's not even just for phones - it's the entire lineup! You literally just walk into any Apple store and get your product fixed/exchanged, no questions asked.

In my case, having bought my Z10 from overseas, I'm constantly living in the fear of something happening to it because it will surely be a headache if something was to happen to it.

Indeed! I've far too long seen many in your position with various manufacturers smartphones have a scratch, a drop dent, or buggy storage memory or ROM needing a replacement and HAD to ship it back overseas. This is ONLY acceptable if an OEM specifically made a phone for a particular provider: HTC comes to mind with the various versions of Windows Smartphone Edition phones for Vodafone, Orange, etc. back in the day.