Complaint Review: UBreakIfix - Nationwide

Five weeks after getting my new Note 3 with an insurance replacement from AT&T, I dropped the phone and cracked the screen.  Not wanting to lose my photos and text messages since my last backup, I visited UBreakIfix in Kennesaw (on Saturday, July 8th) and paid the a $106 deposit toward the repair of my Samsung Galaxy Note 3.  The store rep take three to four days and would cost $199.

On Friday, the 14th,  I called the store and was told the part was in the mail. After another call,  “David” blamed the delay on the USPS losing the part in the mail but that the post office located the package would would have it there “the next day.”  Yeah, right.  On Monday the 17th, I called again.  This time David promised that the phone would be ready  by 6PM on Tuesday, July 18.

I visited the store at 6PM on July 19. David brought the phone out and it was still in pieces.  However, David allowed me to see the phone to verify at least the screen itself had been  fixed.  While the screen appeared to be fixed, I immediately saw that the phone's data was wiped. It is clear that UBreakIfix did a factory reset of the phone, destroying all the phone's data!  When I confronted him, David lied and claimed it was impossible for them to have destroyed the phone's data (I did a quick search on google and found multiple references to how it is done with a dead screen, including a YouTube shows the process step-by-step).  

On July 20 I contacted the corporate offices of UBreakIfix and explained the situation to a customer service rep, who offered a $50 discount on the repair.    

On July 24, David called and said he could fix the phone only if I paid another $100 because the phone was "old" and the motherboard was “deteriorating.”  Wow, who would have figured that a 5-week old phone would have a deteriorating motherboard! For that matter, who would have thought a plastic circuit board would deteriorate, at all.   UBreakIfix advertise repairs for this very phone, so I believe the claim of a faulty motherboard was retaliation for my complaint to the corporate office!

After this call, I again contacted the corporate office of UBreakIfix again spoke to customer service.  Eventually, he said he would contact the store owners, Jeff Lennox or Matthew Wadsworth, and see what he could work out.   A couple hours later, they waived the repair bill and refunded the deposit, and I picked up my phone with a cracked screen (new cracks that were not evident when I brought it) and which will not power on.

In my opinion, they failed to  exercise due professional care in the discharge of their repairs:  

1. They wiped the data from my phone;

2. They lied about wiping the data from my phone.

3. The claimed additional damage was found after I complained about the wiping of my data and the lying store rep.

I do not recommend this store or any store owned by these franchise owners.  I have no opinion as to the corporation, itself.