kieranbass
6th June 2003, 02:04 AM
Hi all..I recently bought an XDA from an O2 outlet here in Ireland which I subsequently sent back due to speaker problems. Having waited two days for my replacement XDA, (in the interim I was given a Nokia 5110 as a substitute phone, I'm sure they got it out of a musuem..) I finally picked it up yesterday. The retailer told me it was a brand new phone and that it had come out of a sealed box. When I picked up the phone I noticed marks on the top of the aerial consistent with a fall or even with someone nibbling on it! I pointed this out to the retailer and was assured again that the phone was brand new. Giving the benefit of the doubt I brought the phone home, hooked it up to the PC and went to adjust the memory allocation as I was gonna transfer a large number of mp3s to it. Now the XDA I originally bought had 64MB RAM, the unit I was given as its replacement had 32MB RAM - so much for it being a brand new phone! Also the battery took less than 2 hours to fully charge - on my original XDA the initial charge took approx 4 hours with subsequent recharges taking about 2 hours, the same length of time my supposedly "new" XDA took to fully charge on what should have been it's initial charge.
At this point something a friend said with regard to technology popped into my head, call it paranoia but he is fully convinced that Ireland receives the rejects, previously repaired, or just downright faulty items of technology where they are pawned off as being brand new. My experience with this XDA seems to bear it out. I rang the O2 retailer back and informed them that the phone I received was not new and when I explained my reasons why, I was told that the phone was probably a new one alright but that it had just been sitting in its box in a shop and not sold, hence the 32MB rather than 64MB version I was given. It didn't explain the marks around the aerial or why the initial charge took only as long as a phone that's been in use before to charge.
Am I being paranoid here or are companies chancing their arm by sending units that are technically second hand to Ireland (or other countries for that matter) for resale as new units? Does anyone else have a similiar experience, not necessarily with the XDA but with other top of the range (and expensive!) products, technological or otherwise?
At this point something a friend said with regard to technology popped into my head, call it paranoia but he is fully convinced that Ireland receives the rejects, previously repaired, or just downright faulty items of technology where they are pawned off as being brand new. My experience with this XDA seems to bear it out. I rang the O2 retailer back and informed them that the phone I received was not new and when I explained my reasons why, I was told that the phone was probably a new one alright but that it had just been sitting in its box in a shop and not sold, hence the 32MB rather than 64MB version I was given. It didn't explain the marks around the aerial or why the initial charge took only as long as a phone that's been in use before to charge.
Am I being paranoid here or are companies chancing their arm by sending units that are technically second hand to Ireland (or other countries for that matter) for resale as new units? Does anyone else have a similiar experience, not necessarily with the XDA but with other top of the range (and expensive!) products, technological or otherwise?