It’s now a year since my original blog post and all the problems I had with HTC.
Sadly I’m still getting comments on this post as it seems they still have all the same problems with their aftercare 12 months later. Some of their behaviour is clearly bordering on illegal and the company seems to bury its head in the sand.
Late last year my phone started playing up again, which judging by most of the posts they always do this after their repairs, so eventually I bit the bullet and bought an iPhone. Despite my cynicism about Apple and being bored by many people telling me how “amazing” they are, I took the plunge as I knew I didn’t want a Blackberry or a Samsung and there was no way I’m going near HTC again.
I haven’t looked back. I love the phone, not because it’s Apple, not because it looks nice but because IT ACTUALLY WORKS!
Many of my work colleagues still have their HTC phones and they still moan about the things I moaned about on my Hero. Here’s a summary of the main problems:
Lack of memory on the actual phone, yes I know you can add a memory card to it but the phones still keep running out of space for apps.
The lag, oh the annoying lag. ‘Click…. and wait, click…. and wait.’ Not sure if this the HTC phone or just Android. The Android tablets we test with at work are just as bad for this.
Phone reception. The iPhone 4 was publicly lynched by the media for it’s poor reception, compared to my Hero it’s amazing.
Battery life, my Hero barely lasted all day and that was without using the music player or surfing the net. The iPhone lasts at least double the lifetime of my Hero with heavy usage.
All of the above are problems when the phone works….
Do keep posting comments below, if no one complains nothing will ever change. Good luck, you’ll need it.
WARNING – THIS POST IS A RANT
Every now and then, you have to deal with a company who are just so incompetent that they make your blood boil and eventually you feel as if you are being unreasonable just for expecting the service from them they are offering.
Many years ago I bought a phone by HTC, it was the SPV M700 and I really liked it. After a few years it was becoming so slow as the buttons were so unresponsive (well, it was running Windows Mobile so what do you expect?) that I decided an upgrade was due. Naively I thought I’d stick with HTC and got the Hero which at the time seemed like a top of the range phone. God, it was slow, but the new Android system was pretty cool and when they release the 2.1 update this would sort things out. This was due to be released in Jan 2010 so it was only a few months to wait….. wrong……!!!!!!!!!!
HTC were so slow to release this, and now we know why. The phone isn’t capable of running it. The update was finally launched at the end of June 2010. For a week my phone was super fast, “at last I had a better phone than an iPhone!” I said. Within a week the screen stopped responding and the phone developed a life of it’s own. Below is a video (one of many on YouTube of the problem loads of people have been having.)
I contacted them after trying for a few weeks to fix the problem myself by uninstalling apps and doing a factory reset. After calling them numerous times, each time being told to do a factory reset again, they relented and took the phone off me in August.
They’ve now had my phone for 3 weeks and although it’s been fixed (apparently) for nearly a week now they still haven’t shipped it to me.
This morning I rang and asked to speak to someone from their complaints department and actually spoke to someone who was honest with me. He stated they have been flooded with repairs and can’t cope. But why was I so angry? On Wednesday I was told my phone would be with me the next day, on Friday I called to ask what was going on and the guy was so short tempered with me telling me it UPS’s fault for not picking it up. Today I was told I may get my phone back this week, I may not. They are so overloaded they just don’t know. So it’s not UPS’s fault as I suspected.
HTC products are great when they work, but when things go wrong, they really go wrong. They spend so much time creating new phones, they forget about the aftercare. A 6 month old phone is not a consideration to them anymore…. “repairs???? updates???? pppffffttt!!! Just get a new phone!” is their attitude. Do they not live in the real world? These things aren’t cheap.
I had a similar experience with Motorola a few years ago and promised never to buy one of their phones again. It was repaired 3 times and each time it came back with the same problem. Do Motorola even still make phones?
HTC are not going to be around for too long either, a quick search on Google shows how many problems their latest handsets have got, they can’t cope with Android. Their repair service is appalling, their customer service is appalling, any other brand you can get repaired in either a Carphone Warehouse repair centre or Apple store whilst you wait, HTC literally takes a month or more.
So in total, I have been about 3 months now without a fully functioning phone. If you include the wait for the Android update, it’s been 9 months. Since the update I have been able to use it occasionally, but mostly to try and fix the problems with it. I’ve now decided it’s time to look around for a new phone. I can’t afford it, but HTC are too incompetent. When the phone is repaired i’ll send it off for recycling where they will give me £90 for it. Where do I go now, do I sell-out and follow all the sheep with Apple, or go retro with a Nokia? Neither seem appealling, but both are preferable to another HTC.
By the way, does anyone have the HTC UK CEO’s email address or phone number? I’d like to have a chat with him or her.
UPDATE: Finally got the phone back. So far so good, it works. Still determined that I will never buy HTC again.
Published on September 18, 2010 12:04 pm.
Filed under: Rant Tags: HTC
had htc chacha 3 weeks ago and just died on me wouldnt turn on and when it did crashed and turned off again they were coming to pick it up and said if i cant print out the address and ups number then write it down so i did this and took day off work only to be told i aint taking this without a print out spoke to htc again and was told we will come again next weekend i said i dont have a printer oh no worries write down same details and that will be fine bad enough that it lasted 3 weeks but even worse that it will take almost the same time to send the heap of shit back to them and prob even longer for them to fix the thing ill never buy htc again total sack of shit
Did you ever find an effective way to get information from HTC? My girlfriends ChaCha was shipped with a memory issue (can’t save data to her SD card at all, it’s a recognised hardware issue). She paid £24 for them to fix it, which I find outrageous considering it’s their problem, then requested her phone contract as proof of ownership. They then sent the phone back completely unchanged and destroyed her contract.
Upon calling them she was told she should have sent through a copy of the contract rather than the actual document, but I’ve seen the emails and nowhere does it mention sending a copy. They’ve now told her that it may take a few days to assess the phone service she was given, but have been rather abrupt.
They’ve effectively stolen my girlfriend’s money and made her contract void, and are still being outright stupid about the whole situation.
Just wanted to report back that HTC are wonderful! After emailing direct to a couple of people (emails obtained from posts left here) and using the HTC website contact forms for both Customer Service and PR Support yesterday, we have today received a very successful and speedy response to our complete satisfaction! Thanks for your help guys and I wish you all well with your HTC issues.
My wife’s HTC ChaCha hasn’t worked since the day she bought it. HTC have had it twice now, each time they send it back they say something different, and it still doesn’t work, it drops signal all the time, goes to 999 calls only, the Facebook function doesn’t work, their service is a joke, they refuse to escalate to managers, refuse to help and just come out with the same crap stock answers. I would urge anybody not to buy an HTC phone, you will regret it!
I recently wrote a rather lengthy blog post regarding Ride’s second album ‘Going Blank Again’.
The release of this album in 1992 marked the end of indie music being interesting for a good few years, most of the experimentation seemed to happen in dance for much of the 90′s whilst guitar music became all about record sales.
I was very pleased to see the launch of a local project which has been funded by the Arts Council to get John Peel’s record collection online.
Like most people my age John Peel educated me not only on the best new bands around, but he also taught me about a stack of obscure music I’d never have heard without him.
Sennen release their forth album this week. For those of you with Spotify access you can now listen to the album there.
It’s nearly a decade since they formed and I am pleased to have worked with them for most of that time through releasing their records and building their website.
Am 80% of the way through rebuilding a website with a responsive design at the moment. The one thing that can be time consuming when you start switching the site over is that the images and videos don’t change size to suit your new layout.
Interesting to see the originators of social media Friends Reunited get a makeover, I do like the design which I think has been very clever to tap into peoples nostalgia visually. After logging in for the first time in years I still felt a little deflated at the lack of activity and things to view. Who knows if people will go back to the site.
With The Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and Inspiral Carpets all touring this summer I thought I’d take a moment to look back on the original Madchester era. Pre 1988 it was unthinkable for any ‘indie’ band to be making dance music let alone having a remix, only New Order could get away with such behaviour. After the success of Happy Mondays ‘Wrote For Luck’ and later ‘Fool’s Gold’ by The Stone Roses everyone decided they had always had a dance element to their music. This mix features many of the remixes of that era from late 1989 to 1992.
Spring is in the air and the days are getting longer, which is great news as life no longer becomes so much of an endurance test and and it’s loads easier to find pleasures in life. Therefore it’s time for a look at the releases that are currently floating my boat…. Read more »
1992. This was the year Reading went BIG!!! I first went in 1988 and it was utter rubbish. We all went just to see The Wonder Stuff whom i loved back then, but the rest of the bill was terrible (Bonnie Tyler, Meat Loaf, Starship!). The following year they addressed the line-up issue and had New Order and the House of Love play. Then in 1991 Nirvana played on a cold windy Friday afternoon (I dismissed them as Dinosaur Jr wannabes at the time) and within 6 months they were the biggest band on the planet and things started to change…. Read more »
had htc chacha 3 weeks ago and just died on me wouldnt turn on and when it did crashed and turned off again they were coming to pick it up and said if i cant print out the address and ups number then write it down so i did this and took day off work only to be told i aint taking this without a print out spoke to htc again and was told we will come again next weekend i said i dont have a printer oh no worries write down same details and that will be fine bad enough that it lasted 3 weeks but even worse that it will take almost the same time to send the heap of shit back to them and prob even longer for them to fix the thing ill never buy htc again total sack of shit
Did you ever find an effective way to get information from HTC? My girlfriends ChaCha was shipped with a memory issue (can’t save data to her SD card at all, it’s a recognised hardware issue). She paid £24 for them to fix it, which I find outrageous considering it’s their problem, then requested her phone contract as proof of ownership. They then sent the phone back completely unchanged and destroyed her contract.
Upon calling them she was told she should have sent through a copy of the contract rather than the actual document, but I’ve seen the emails and nowhere does it mention sending a copy. They’ve now told her that it may take a few days to assess the phone service she was given, but have been rather abrupt.
They’ve effectively stolen my girlfriend’s money and made her contract void, and are still being outright stupid about the whole situation.
Ref messages from Dave (Sep 11 2011). Did a Facebook page for HTC Complaints get set up only I can’t find it???
Thanks,
Wendy.
Just wanted to report back that HTC are wonderful! After emailing direct to a couple of people (emails obtained from posts left here) and using the HTC website contact forms for both Customer Service and PR Support yesterday, we have today received a very successful and speedy response to our complete satisfaction! Thanks for your help guys and I wish you all well with your HTC issues.
My wife’s HTC ChaCha hasn’t worked since the day she bought it. HTC have had it twice now, each time they send it back they say something different, and it still doesn’t work, it drops signal all the time, goes to 999 calls only, the Facebook function doesn’t work, their service is a joke, they refuse to escalate to managers, refuse to help and just come out with the same crap stock answers. I would urge anybody not to buy an HTC phone, you will regret it!
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