[HTC One X] dave@dkvinyls:
Well I’ve kept quiet until now and given HTC the chance to resolve my issue. Its now come to a head and its time for me to tell my story.

My One X developed the WiFi antenna issue after around 7 weeks of use, my first mistake here was arranging for the fault to be fixed direct with HTC. The phone was picked up and went merrily off for repair. 10 working days later the phone was sent back, it was signed for by my neighbour at around 2 pm and I collected it at around 4. What I found in the box infuriated me, there was dust under the camera lens, the screen wasn’t assembled correctly into the frame and the frame was assembled into the rear case correctly. On putting my Sim into the phone it also wouldn’t get a signal.

I contacted HTC by phone and they requested that I submit photos through the contact us page on the HTC website and they assured me the issue would be sent direct to the escalations team. 24 Hours later I had a response asking saying the claim had been passed to the escalation team. 3 days later I asked the tech support for an ETA on an answer from the escalations team, the response came back asking me to wait patiently.

Another 4 days later I asked again for an ETA, again I was asked to wait for an answer. On Monday of this week, a whole 24 days after originally sending my device in I received a call from Head office apologising for the delay. The chap who called me assured me the case would now be dealt with solely by him an asked how I would like the case to be resolved. I told him due to the time I had spent without a phone and due to the fact I have had my phone back a full 12 days with no action I would like my device to be exchanged. A further 2 days later the call came from another person in the escalation team that my phone would need to be returned for repair. So that’s another morning off work to wait in for the courier and another 14 days (10 working days) without my phone while it is being repaired.

I haven’t yet arranged pickup of the device as I feel it is totally unreasonable for HTC to deal with a case in this way. What is the cost difference to HTC between refurbing my damaged device and sending me a refurb to replace it immediately? They’ve certainly lost a customer as I will never buy a HTC device ever again, and in the past I was a die-hard fan. Looking over my computer room last night I counted 6 HTC devices from the past that luckily never needed a repair.

*********** UPDATE 12/08/2012 ******************

I arranged to have my phone collected for repair again on the 27th of July, just after the phone was collected I had a call from the Customer Satisfaction team. The guy was very helpful and first thing Monday morning when the phone arrived at the repair center he called them and had the phone pulled from the line to be worked on immediately. The repair tracking status changed the same day to repair complete, 3 days later on the 3rd of August the phone still hadn't shipped back. I contacted the customer care team and he called the repair center, he called back 2 minutes later and told me the phone was actually being replaced rather than repaired. Who knows what else they found when they took my device apart?

The replacement device was perfect, not a mark on it and everything functioned perfectly. At least it did for 3 days, on the 10th of August the very same WiFi antenna issue became apparent on the new device. Disappointment overcame me at that point and I resigned myself to just using 3G from now on as there was no way I would be dealing with the HTC repair center again, enough was enough.

Later in the evening I decided to bite the bullet and repair the One X myself, having previous experience with military aircraft avionics I decided I was certainly more competent than the repair center have proved themselves to be. Opening the phone was very simple requiring nothing more than my fingernail around the edges. For now I have bent the contacts upwards and normal service is resumed, I'm considering ordering a replacement white rear case for my phone, if I do I'll be soldering 2 30AWG kynar wires to permanently hard wire the connection. There's plenty of room back there if you position the cables right.

So in conclusion, I now have no warranty, but whats the point of a warranty if the provider is totally incompetent? I couldn't be happier with my phone now, that being said and there's no uncertainty in my mind that I will never buy a HTC device again. Every manufacturer has problems with hardware at some point, its the way in which they resolve the problem that rescues their reputation. In this instance HTC have failed in every aspect.