Hot Stuff - Part II

It seems like my fears of taking my broken Nokia Lumia 920 back to the store weren’t unfounded.

As mentioned from my previous article, the phone has been malfunctioning for a while, finally getting dangerously hot on Monday evening. The advice from T-Mobile was to take it back to the store for repair, which I just attempted.

Earlier this morning however, I decided to reset the phone back to factory state before handing it, and all my personal information, over to an unknown person. Unfortunately, on restarting, the phone just hangs at this screen 

I didn’t rush it, leaving the phone for a little over one and a half hours. A soft (or is it hard) reset by pressing the volume down and power buttons at the same time had no effect. Nokia Cares eventually came back to me with the same advice, but by then I had already been to the Stratford EE store…

On arriving at the store an assistant came over to me very promptly. I showed him the phone (still sporting its spinning cogs) and whilst I explained to him how the phone was finding itself in its current state, he barely pretended to listen, but was keen to tell me that they had no loaner phones in the store (OK then, I’ll keep the faulty phone instead then shall I?!!?!?!), which isn’t a problem as I have a few older phones to fall back on.

We removed the SIM card, and he told me he needed the IMEI number, which wasn’t on the SIM tray.

Fair enough.

He went to ask somebody else for a couple of minutes, then returned to tell me there was nothing they could do without the IMEI number, and I should take the phone and box into the Colchester store.

OK, inconvenient, but I convinced him the Stratford store was easier for me (you know, I have this crazy thing called work that tends to take me out of Colchester during the daytime, and would possibly explain why I was wearing a shirt).

Then another member of staff came over, who when questioned, mentioned that because I had bought the phone from that very store, my details would be in the system along with the IMEI number.

Bingo!

But neither my address or name appeared when searching by my postcode, which he was kind enough to show me on the screen. Back to the “nothing we can do without the box” line…

“But you can search under my phone number” I pointed out.

So we did.

I don’t know why I bothered. Results: 0.

What?!!

Guess what, back to the “nothing we can do without the box” line…

No suggestion that we might call the T-mobile service number (150 from a phone) on the off-chance they might have it.

No provision for taking the phone, which they sold me, in for repair (it’s under warranty so would be Nokia’s problem anyway!)

No sir. I have to go back in, wasting another lunch break, and will probably find I need something else they forgot to mention.

Thanks EE. Great service there!