Other News: Mobile Phone Rant

This is not nail polish related, be forewarned. 

Back story: I have an o2 Atom phone (Windows Mobile) which I bought maybe 2 years ago in Dubai. More or less a year ago, it stopped working properly. I can still receive messages and calls but it won’t ring. It vibrates, but does not ring.

I decided to bring it to Greenhills Shopping Center (which I think is now called V-Mall). This is where we usually go to have phones and gaming consoles “fixed”. Just as we suspected the speakers of my o2 Atom is damaged (duh!). It needs to be replaced.

One guy said it would be 500 PHP. We went to another stall to ask, said they don’t have parts. Showed us one more stall. They told us that it would cost 800 PHP and there is also something wrong with the keypad or something. So we went back to 500 PHP guy. He fixed the keypad or something and said that he can’t replace the speaker (or buzzer as they call it) because it must be “original parts”. Although, he asked me to pay 100 PHP because he fixed the keypad or something. I told him he didn’t have to do that because that can be easily repaired. He shouldn’t be charging me 100 PHP for that! 

We went back to 800 PHP guy. He showed us the parts and we asked him if this is his final price. He is not giving me brand new parts, these are just salvaged from other phones! He wouldn’t budge. So we went around the mall some more to check and haggle of course. But apparently 800 PHP guy is the only one with parts available. So I caved. Told him to fix my phone.

You know what he told me??? “The spare parts are no longer available, somebody took it when you left a few minutes ago”.

Less than 20 minutes and somebody with the same problem with the same phone took the spare parts? Unbelievable! o2 Atom is not very common here (not as popular as Nokia, Motorola and Sony Ericsson) Here’s what I think happened:

800 PHP guy got pissed because we kept on asking if he would lower his price and we kept on going to other stores. He gave me this look and then told me that the parts were gone. Unbelievable!!

So here’s my message to you, the guy who was at RAZEC store… I do not care if you are the best repair/spare parts supply store. You’re attitude sucks! I won’t ever go back to your stupid store!!

100 PHP guy also refunded my money because the other keypad or something is still broken. Hay! Where do I get this fixed?!