[stonent]

I don't think I've seen one. So as we deal a lot with the phones I'd like to start one. We deal primarily with Nextel and T-Mobile, both in the US.

NEXTEL (USA):
For Nextel, you have to take the phone to an "Authorized Service Center" which means a store that ships out Blackberries. Call the store first to confirrm!
As long as the phone is less than a year old, they will take your phone then and overnight you a replacement. If you get the phone to them before 2:00PM you will usually have the replacement the following morning. (Cracked screens are not covered)

If it is out of warranty, they will charge you 35$ for the replacement phone which doesn't seem to be a bad deal. In some cases, they will actually just give you the phone on the spot! We had one user take in his 7510 for repair, he paid the 35$ and the manager handed him a new 7520, to top that off, he got the 7510 mailed back to him repaired!

T-Mobile (USA):
You must call T-Mobile and prove the phone is defective. They will usually try to install OS 4 on your phone or reload the current OS, so make sure you've done that ahead of time. If in warranty, they will ship you a phone DHL ground IIRC and it will arrive in 2 to 7 days. If the phone is out of warranty, they will charge you 75$ to replace the phone. Then you have 7 days to send the bad phone back in.

Please share your experiences with other carriers and please note the country.

[dozment]

I just had my Cingular 7290 replaced. The process is similar to T-Mo's. I called tech support and convinced them that I had an issue. After they verified that I had upgraded to OS 4 they opened a ticket with RIM. RIM called to verify the troubleshooting steps and to set up the exchange. I paid a few dollars extra to have my replacement expedited, and I received it the following day.

A day or so ago I received an email (from Cingular or RIM?) saying they had received my defective phone.

Overall, it was a fairly smooth process.

[Dawg]

Good Post. Nextel will not do any door to door stuff on the blackberrys you must go to a service center.

[stonent]

Hmm the part about opening a ticket with RIM isn't something I've seen. Usually T-Mobile or Nextel will escalate the call once they hear it is a blackberry and send you to one of their in-house BB people. I was told once at Nextel that RIM employees work in the Nextel call center.

[stonent]

Originally Posted by Dawg

Good Post. Nextel will not do any door to door stuff on the blackberrys you must go to a service center.

Yeah, do a store lookup on the Nextel site and look for the company owned stores. Then call them until you find one that will accept Blackberries for shipment.

[Dawg]

On mine the buttons hang all the time and you get a constant beep and it wont shut off or anything till you remove the battery. Has gotten worse over past two weeks.

[dozment]

Originally Posted by stonent

Hmm the part about opening a ticket with RIM isn't something I've seen. Usually T-Mobile or Nextel will escalate the call once they hear it is a blackberry and send you to one of their in-house BB people. I was told once at Nextel that RIM employees work in the Nextel call center.

Now that I think about it that may not be EXACTLY how it happened after all. Cingular's Tech placed me on hold while he called RIM. He switched between us a few times, and then transferred me to RIM so that the RIM guy could confirm that I did a javaloader wipe and clean install of OS 4. The RIM guy created a ticket, and told me to call Cingular back to get the device replaced. When I called Cingular back and gave them the RIM ticket number they called RIM to confirm(!), and then started the process of doing the replacement. I guess the RIM contact I was talking to could have been at Cingular's call center, but the Cingular tech had to wait on hold before talking to him.

I take back that "it was a fairly smooth process". It wasn't. But these days if I spend less than four hours on the phone and get my replacement in within a couple of weeks I assume I got normal customer service. In this case I was on the phone for about an hour and got the replacement the next day.

Sorry for the misinformation.

[jbairdjr]

I had the trackwheel go bad on my 7100g. I called the service center, and they overnighted a new 7100g (at no cost to me). I put my old 7100g in the box, and postage back was also paid.
I bought mine through my govt rep, but I was very pleased with the service.
I dont know if it was that I had a hardware defect as opposed to a software issue, but I am more than happy.