[Desire General] haggisuk99:
The warranty is with the manufacturer, they basically say that the product will be free of defects for a certain amount of time and during this time the item will be repaired free of charge, this is legal requirement because of the sale of goods act. It is covered by the durability clause in the sale of goods act.

They will only do this however if it is a fault because of a defect within the item. Within the first 6 months you do not have to prove this it is up to the manufacturer to prove otherwise, (this is a key statement here) after 6 months it is up to you to prove that the fault existed from the start.

Now when you buy a handset you have a sale of contract with the company that you buy the handset from, this sale of contract is covered by the sales of goods act and it simply means that it is the retailers responsibility to deal with the suppliers/manufacturers on your behalf and if the item isnt repaired or replaced within a reasonable amount of time usually 30-60 days then they have step in an organise a replacement or refund at the retailers cost then to recover that from the manufacturer/supplier. Please note this is different for a phone supplied by a mobile network.

Now the key issues here is whether or not rooting or replacing the rom voids the warranty.

Basically when you try and change your phone under warranty the burden of proof is on the manufacturer up until the phone is 6 months old to prove that the defect was caused by you and not inherant from the phones manufacture this means that rooting the phone give you control over the o/s that controls the hardware and you could have damaged the phone by installing something that could affect the hardware ie overclocked the cpu memory etc etc. this doesnt have to be proved as in the eyes of the law it is Prima facie which means that the fact it is rooted is enough for the manufacturer to be able to reject the unit.

you have to remember that a warranty only states that the item is free of defects and if it isnt then the manufacturer has to repair it free of charge, by rooting the phone you allow the manufacturer a way of saying that the defect could have been introduced by the consumer thus it negates their responsibility to repair your phone free of charge. The same would be true after the 6 month period it would be even easier to negate the warranty then as the burden of proof is then on you instead.

With regards to changing the standard rom.

Clause 7(e) I think basically states that the warrantry is invalid if the defect was caused by a defective function of the cellular network or other system or

7(f) the product software needs to be upgraded due to changes in the cellular network parameters.

both of these clauses could be called into effect if you replace the rom with another one other than meant for the phone by the network etc etc

ie if you put a 02 rom onto a t-mobile they are in effect different networks and each will have its own settings and parameters, however this to me is a grey area a very grey area as technically all the roms are supplied by HTC their phones are designed to run on all networks so i assume that this is more a clause for grey imports rather than switching from one network rom to another or too a generic. Still under the eyes of the law they could use this if they want. What is more important to me with regards this is that with any network supplied phone (branded) if you do not follow their instructions with regards to the handset you can invalidate your warrranty, basically the phone is a subsidised handset and your contract of sale is actually for your airtime and not your handset so technically if you do something that your network prohibits then you technically lose any statuory rights with the phone as it is not covered by the sales of goods act. This does not however stop you from dealing with HTC direct and they will have to honour any warranty agreement supplied with the handset.

Hope that makes sense.

Hope this explains a bit better your position. this topic has been done to death already so I just want people to know their position correctly.