[ONE General] lms24:
Hello my friends!

I haven't been posting on XDA for quite a long time but I thought I had to share this with you. About a year ago, I bought a OnePlus One and I was happy with the device itself and CM 11 and 12 as well. However, this summer in July, the microphones of my OPO stopped working during calls.

I started to do some research and found a few threads on the OnePlus forum and on XDA from users complaining about the same problem. The microphone suddenly stopped to work during calls and the person on the other phone could not hear anything. The only workaround is to switch to speaker mode. Some other users also posted workarounds and potential fixes for the well-known issue. I tried all of them but none of them worked. Here are links to some of the threads I am referring to:

OnePlus Forum

XDA

reddit

So as you can see, this is quite a common problem and therefore probably known by OnePlus. Since none of the mentioned fixes helped

and flashing different ROMS did not improve anything I started to get in touch with the OnePlus customer support. Before owning the OPO I had several HTC and Nexus devices and I already had to deal with the HTC support twice because of two hardware failures. The HTC support was surprisingly friendly and simple to deal with, so I figured, contacting the OP support would not be a big deal. I would be proven wrong in the next weeks...

I first contacted the OP support on the 16th of July. I provided them with a detailed error description, a few pics of my device with a timestamp to provide proof of ownership and the request to repair or replace my phone since it was still covered under the 1 year warranty. Shortly after, I received a reply from the support staff in which they asked me to provide a few more details (OS and Android version, CM or Oxygen, etc) which I did instantly.

Then I was forwarded to a "OnePlus tech specialist" who gave me instruction to flash a version of Oxygen OS and to run a microphone test, which of course I did as well. Like I expected, the issue did not disappear magically and I got a reply that a "OnePlus level 2 tech specialist" would have to connect himself to my PC via a secure software and try to fix my phone. They called this remote session. I had to book an appointment for this remote session.

By this time I was already getting quite angry at Oneplus, since it seemed like they were ignoring my actual issue and my request for a warranty covered replacement or repair. I told them that I did not expect that this remote session would help, since I was quite sure that it was a hardware fault. However, they insisted that I had to book this remote session, which turned out to be quite difficult. There were no free slots for the next two weeks. Luckily a slot was suddenly available in the next week when I checked the booking reservations for the tenth time and I managed to book it. Since the time slot was 11AM I had to take half a day off my work to make it to the appointment. A few minutes before the session should have started; I got an email from support to download the necessary software for the session, which turned out to be Teamviewer! I thought this was a bad joke. Teamviewer was their idea of a secure remote session software. I downloaded it anyways (what other choice did I have?) and waited for the level 2 tech. And I waited. After half an hour I wrote to the support that no one showed up yet although my time slot was already almost over. After almost 30 more minutes the tech finally connected herself to my PC. I told her, that she was not allowed to do anything on my PC without my permission since there was confidential data of my clients stored on the PC, to which she agreed to. The session however was a pure joke. After installing some Qualcomm drivers and rebooting my PC and plugging in and out my device about 100 times, she said that my device was indeed broken and that I would now be forwarded to the RMA department.

Almost three weeks, many pointless arguments with the support and this joke of a remote session, after I started contacting the support, I was finally granted an RMA repair/replacement. I thought that it would now finally be over and I would get back a new or repaired device. WRONG. But more to that later.

I got instructions to prepare the package to ship it to the 1+ repair center in the UK. I was told I would have to fill out an online form for DHL since they would come to my house and pick up my device. I filled out the form and was expecting a phone call to fix a time where they would come by as promised by 1+ and DHL. Well, I was at work on a Monday morning and suddenly without a phone call or any notification, a DHL delivery guy showed up at my house. Luckily someone was at home who gave him the package. However, the DHL guy asked for an address, which the person at home did not know, so they called me. Now I had to explain to the guy that I had no idea what the address was because I never got one from 1+. They said that DHL would have the address. So after around half an hour, I was notified that the DHL guy took the parcel with him after with him after he got a call from DHL who said that they knew the address.

The next day, the same DHL guy showed up at my house again (again w/o calling) because he got another order to pick up my phone which he did already yesterday...

After around a week of silence, I was notified from support that they received my package and ran it through a first stage inspection where they detected a water damage. They told me, they would send it to a secondary inspection to verify if it is really a water damage. I could not believe that my phone really had a water damage because I am very careful with my devices and I knew that I never exposed my 1+1 to water or some sort of steam or extreme moisture in general. A few days later they sent me the second inspection report which of course confirmed the water damage and thus my warranty covered RMA was denied. I told them that this could not be possible because I couldn't imagine how my device would have gotten anywhere near water. The next weeks I was arguing with several support members (they changed their names randomly and I had no idea who would reply anymore). I was basically given 2 options: pay 213€ for a repair or pay 45€ of shipping costs to get back the defect device.

After around 3 weeks (they often ignored me for days) I was so frustrated with the company and the way they treated me that I just wanted to get back my device and hence I paid the horrifying 45€ shipping costs (UK-Austria normally costs 12-20€ for a package of this size).

During those three weeks I was doing some research about 1+ RMA denials and look what I have found:

here: reddit

and here: reddit #2

and here: reddit #3

and here(!): reddit#4

So apparently, many users got their RMA denied because of water damage although they never exposed their device to water. There seem to be two water damage indicators (little white stickers that turn red when they are in contact with water) inside the 1+1, one in the headphone jack and one at the bottom of the phone underneath the buttons. Some people were smart enough to take photos of their white indicators before shipping the device off to RMA repair and received an inspection report with a photo showing red indicators, when they got their RMA denied. So these indicators *somehow* seem to have turned red.

After finding this, I was relatively shocked. I mean, I was mad at 1+ for their incompetent customer service but I couldn't believe that so many people had the same struggle and some even have proof that they were falsely accused of being responsible for the water damage. Unfortunately, I was not clever enough to take my phone apart and take pictures of the water indicators but I cannot imagine that they were red when I shipped the device off. Unfortunately I cannot proof anything.

After talking with two lawyers, we came to the conclusion that pursuing further legal options would be very difficult, considering that the law in Hong Kong where 1+ is located is probably completely different. Furthermore it would cost too much and my chances of winning wouldn't be high since I did not have any evidence except many reports of other people with the same problems from the internet.

Now after more than 2 months of arguing with the support I decided to pay the 45€ shipping costs and I'm probably going to sell the defect device but you can be sure, that I'll never buy anything from this company again. I can't proof anything but their warranty denials seem.... shady.

Now, I really hope that you never have to deal with the 1+ customer support because it is simply horribly. They have no idea what they are talking about, they just send copy and pasted replies and often they don't read your replies at all, they ignore you for days, their procedures are extremely complicated and they deny warranties in many(!) cases without a proper reason. Sometimes even, although there is proof that says otherwise.

If you consider buying a 1+1 or 1+2, be warned because the same thing can happen to you. It happened to many people and it will probably happen again.

If you are going to ship off your device to RMA, be sure to take as many detailed, high-res photos as possible of the outside AND of the inside of the device. Be sure to check the water damage indicators and take a good picture of them. Also write today’s date and your name on a piece of paper and photograph it with your phone so that you can proof that the pictures are yours.

TL;DR

Microphone doesn’t work during calls; contacted 1+ customer support; complicated and pointless tries by 1+ to fix phone w/o RMA; after weeks: RMA granted; shipping difficulties; RMA denied because of water damage; many other users also got RMA denied because of water damage despite of proof that there was no water damage; 1+ RMA denials seem shady (see links);