[bulldogg39]

I just went to a local private cell phone dealer who is selling me the curve pearl and razr for 185 total!! However, he told me that the curve has bad reviews and that he wont give me any warranty with it. He told me that 2 out of the 3 curves he has sold have come back with problems. Is the curve really that bad or is the batch his supplier has defective.

[flash24]

There are good curves and bad curves.. if you get a good one then you will be a happy guy.. you get a bad one.. you can always go to your nearest ATT store and get it replaced.

And yea, ATT doesn't off PDA warranty. Good thing I'm with tmo.

[Perfect Storm]

This sounds like a scam. Were it legit it would at the very least have a 1 year warranty with it.

[murpheous]

I purchased 10 Curves for my company, every single one was perfect.

[rsnadel]

Originally Posted by flash24

There are good curves and bad curves.. if you get a good one then you will be a happy guy.. you get a bad one.. you can always go to your nearest ATT store and get it replaced.

And yea, ATT doesn't off PDA warranty. Good thing I'm with tmo.

Actually, the original poster would not be able to go to an AT&T store to return it, because he bought a non-warranty device.

[sjsilverman]

Originally Posted by rsnadel

Actually, the original poster would not be able to go to an AT&T store to return it, because he bought a non-warranty device.

This in itself is completely assinine! If you don't buy it at an ATT store, you get no warranty. RIM charges $199 for a repair order on a Curve. This sounds like our politicians...nobody wants to take responsibility when things aren't done exactly the way they want or work out the way they expect. So despite the fact that there are some major quality control issues going on with the Curve, if you don't buy it at an ATT dealer, your SOL. It's a sin, and RIM should be ashamed of themselves.

Imagine if you bought a brand new car, and you used a bank for financing. In reality, the bank owns the car, and when you finish paying it off, you get title. So, the day after you bought this car, it stopped working. You would expect that you would be able to take it to a dealer and have it repaired under warranty. But under the RIM scenario, the car dealer would tell you, sorry, you just spent money on this thing, but we're not going to fix it because the bank bought it, and you are buying it from the bank. Also, we know that there are quality control issues, but we don't care. Go cry about it to someone else.

I am just really ticked off about this, since it happened to me first hand too. I bought a curve from a third party dealer and after 1 week, it started rebooting itself over and over again. I called ATT, and they said sorry, you didn't buy it from us so we won't support it. I called RIM and they said, you didn't buy it from ATT, so give us $199 and we'll fix it. on a one week old device. that everyone knows has quality control issues. terrible.

shame on them

[Perfect Storm]

Originally Posted by sjsilverman

Imagine if you bought a brand new car, and you used a bank for financing. In reality, the bank owns the car, and when you finish paying it off, you get title. So, the day after you bought this car, it stopped working. You would expect that you would be able to take it to a dealer and have it repaired under warranty. But under the RIM scenario, the car dealer would tell you, sorry, you just spent money on this thing, but we're not going to fix it because the bank bought it, and you are buying it from the bank. Also, we know that there are quality control issues, but we don't care. Go cry about it to someone else.

A more apt analogy would be buying a car from a guy on the side of the road who bought it from a lot. The dealer is going to tell you to f-off or pay up if you want repairs cause they have no idea what condition it was in when you bought it.

Resellers that are not carriers - aside from the just announced shop in the UK that will sell devices directly - are getting their devices from carriers. They could do whatever they want before they sell it to you. You want RIM to warranty something joe-blow-screwball did with their device before it was sold when you could have bought it from the proper channel? Give me a break!

[rsnadel]

Originally Posted by sjsilverman

This in itself is completely assinine! If you don't buy it at an ATT store, you get no warranty. RIM charges $199 for a repair order on a Curve. This sounds like our politicians...nobody wants to take responsibility when things aren't done exactly the way they want or work out the way they expect. So despite the fact that there are some major quality control issues going on with the Curve, if you don't buy it at an ATT dealer, your SOL. It's a sin, and RIM should be ashamed of themselves.

Imagine if you bought a brand new car, and you used a bank for financing. In reality, the bank owns the car, and when you finish paying it off, you get title. So, the day after you bought this car, it stopped working. You would expect that you would be able to take it to a dealer and have it repaired under warranty. But under the RIM scenario, the car dealer would tell you, sorry, you just spent money on this thing, but we're not going to fix it because the bank bought it, and you are buying it from the bank. Also, we know that there are quality control issues, but we don't care. Go cry about it to someone else.

I am just really ticked off about this, since it happened to me first hand too. I bought a curve from a third party dealer and after 1 week, it started rebooting itself over and over again. I called ATT, and they said sorry, you didn't buy it from us so we won't support it. I called RIM and they said, you didn't buy it from ATT, so give us $199 and we'll fix it. on a one week old device. that everyone knows has quality control issues. terrible.

shame on them

What I said was that AT&T didn't sell or warranty the item (which, by the way, they don't even make), so why should they support it? There's a reason manufacturers have "authorized resellers;" it establishes a relationship between the two that gives (in this case) RIM confidence that there's nothing untoward about the transaction. Your example is exactly why resellers go to the effort to become authorized dealers. Better question is why didn't you go back to the guy who sold you the phone...probably because you knew he couldn't/wouldn't help you.

[bulldogg39]

Well I called att and they told me that as long as the phone has a att stamp on the exterior body, they would cover it under warranty even though the phone was not purchased at an att corporate store. I also called RIM and they confirmed this. As to the car analogy I dont believe it is quite analogous since the phone is new and untouched just like at an att store so there really isnt any tampering that is to be done. The problems were not the result of the supplier purposely tampering with the phones but rather a poor quality batch released by RIM.

[sean76]

I've said this a couple of times here on the Forum! If you ever have the desire to buy a device, especially a pda smartphone, or a BlackBerry device, buy it at company owned store! No matter the carrier, it's always the safe way to go just in case any issues pop up.

[ksellers914]

sjsilverman, you are way off on this one, and one of the reasons I left the business when I did. ATT provides cell service and anyone can sell a phone that is applicable to that service. They should not be responsible for someone else selling you that phone. A comparable example would be you buying a TV at Best Buy (3rd party cell phone dealer) to use with your Direct TV (ATT) service, and then going to Circuit City asking them to warranty the TV. Or even better, going to Direct Tv and asking them to warranty your Television. This concept at any other retailer would be laughed out of the building. For some reason, people tend to lose their minds when dealing with cell companies and their policies. People expect carriers to change all of the common practices of business just because most people with phones act like children and want what they want, now. Who cares that you paid 1/3 of the price that ATT is asking, you want them to exchange it. Now that is asinine, not assinine.

[bulldogg39]

Well to be fair cell phones are more closely tied to service providers than are tvs since direct tv doesnt actually sell/distribute tvs and furthermore cell phone manufacturers contract with att for warranty claims. Also, att distributes these cell phones in their own distinct packaging so the product was obtained originally through att therefore att is still responisble for any warranty claims even if the product wasnt purchased by the consumer at an att store.

[rsnadel]

Bulldogg-- your last post raises an interesting question. How do you suppose a private seller like the one Silverman used got hold of AT&T-branded curves? I don't have any idea how he obtained them...but my guess is that AT&T probably didn't have any role in it. Yet you still want them to be responsible for the product. In the camera world, they call these items "gray market", because even though they have the manufacturer's label on them, they do NOT have a US warranty (which, by the way, is something that authorized retailers pay a real cost for).

[jetspeedz]

it seems with the 8300 there have been some issues that the previous models didn't have specifically with the phone restarting on calls or browsers and simply switching the devices fixes this. My 7290 and 8700 were bullet proof but the 8300 has been replaced once and its working flawlessly...

[bigmatty]

lol - dont over think this one all, if you are getting 3 phones for that price, and one breaks, no biggie. (if you were getting 3 phones, but had to pay a high price, and one broke - then youd have something to complain about.)

also, lets say you bought it for that price and it broke - you could just ebay it for spare parts and recoop your $.

[greggebhardt]

You need rto tell this scammer NO DEAL!

Then go to a real AT&T store. These "authorized" dealers can be crooks!

[theBorg]

For that price you are buying refurbished devices at best. Warranties are often handled by sellers, not directly with RIM. If he's not offering you a warranty he's not offering you a new device.

%$#! for that price you're luck if they're not hot.

[macallik]

If it sounds too good to be true it probably is.

[rambo47]

Avoid this clown at all costs. Sounds like a scammer selling refurbished/returned/defective units. If you buy anything from an assclown like that, then you deserve all the misery that will surely ensue.

[sjsilverman]

Actually, I don't expect ATT to warrant the device is free of defects. I expect RIM to. They are the company that manufactures, or contracts to manufacture. Just like I would expect Ford to repair a brand new car, regardless of who I bought it from, or Dell to repair my desktop regardless of who I bought it from. If it is a new model, trackable by its serial number, and in this case, a device that has only been out for well under the 12 month warranty period, I would expect that at least they would check it out and if not water damaged and there are no physical signs of abuse, they would repair or replace a clearly defective unit without wanting to charge me $199.

As for ATT, well, my friend was given a Curve as a gift by his father who bought it at the ATT store. It too was defective. He took it to ATT for a warranty claim. They told him that they would have nothing to do with it unless his father brought it in accompanied by a receipt. Just makes no sense to me at all.