[Galaxy S 4 General] neverbeeninariot:
Warranty Repair Refused UK - Knox 0x1

Hey all, this is my first post on the forum.

My i9505 has a faulty proximity sensor which started playing up a couple of months after the purchase. I followed the service centre's advice (factory reset, etc.), but the problem did not go away. I should have returned it for repair there and then, however I decided to install cyanogenmod to see if the fault was with the stock ROM. It wasn't, and of course I tripped the Knox Warranty Void counter to 0x1. Ooops.

Sent the device in for repair and was informed by the Unipart engineer that the warranty was void and that there would be a £150 charge for a new motherboard. That sucked. I declined the repair charge and they returned my device.

That was on 7th August. Since then I've been involved in a long and tedious email exchange (and many equally tedious phone calls) with Samsung UK. At first UK technical support would only keep repeating the mantra, Phone Rooted = Warranty Voided. So I referred them to the EU directive 1999/44/EC - this guarantees EU citizens a mandatory warranty under law. There are a couple of articles in the legislation that are relevant.

Article 5, Section 3.

Unless proved otherwise, any lack of conformity which becomes apparent within six months of delivery of the goods shall be presumed to have existed at the time of delivery unless this presumption is incompatible with the nature of the goods or the nature of the lack of conformity.

Article 7, Section 1.

Any contractual terms or agreements concluded with the seller before the lack of conformity is brought to the seller's attention which directly or indirectly waive or restrict the rights resulting from this Directive shall, as provided for by national law, not be binding on the consumer.

From this, it would seem that I am covered, however UK technical did not want to play ball. Eventually, I managed to get the case picked up by UK customer support. Unfortunately, they are playing hard ball too.

They keep asking for proof of warranty. I found this quite amusing, since they operate their business within the EU and are subject to the laws here same as everyone else, but they don't want to acknowledge this. So, I sent them a link to the directive, and a PDF downloaded from the EU legislation site, along with my sales receipt, and full phone details (I have done this several times, since they keep asking for the same information over and over again). That and lengthy explanations as to why they are in breach of the legislation. To date, they are still holding out.

The most annoying part of all this is how long they take to respond. Usually over a week, and even then I have to email them to remind them that I am still waiting for a resolution.

Even if customer support finally agree that I have sent them the necessary information, I am told that it will only then be escalated to the UK Exec office, at which point I expect the whole sorry saga to continue ad nauseum.

I have heard (sorry, no link), that some people have been successful going down the small claims court route, and I have said to Samsung that I will pursue this if they do not honour their requirements under law.

I'll keep you posted on how it goes, but to be honest, I'm not holding out much hope without resorting to legal action.

Cheers

NBIAR.