The red X of death. Death of the battery that is.

Idiotic move. I know.

I recently bought this Blackberry smartphone, refurbished and unlocked, from Future Shop online. Paid about $180 CDN. The plan was to take it with me travelling and use it with foreign SIM cards.

Future Shop advertised it with a one year warranty. A huge selling point for me. Wasn’t true, as it turns out.

Long story short, the phone was defective – wouldn’t turn off – and killed two batteries. (The one that came with the phone and the $50 replacement).

Future Shop told me to piss off. They wouldn’t take the phone back. My warranty was with Blackberry, they said.

Blackberry’s Twitter “help” proved to be equally frustrating and spectacularly unhelpful. Kept passing the buck to Future Shop, at the same time telling me to have a nice day. I’ve posted a portion of the Twitter correspondence for your amusement.

Don’t bother with Blackberry ‘help’ on Twitter. Utterly useless.

Did cross my mind to just take a hammer to the phone, post the video on You Tube and devote the rest of my life to slagging Blackberry and Future Shop on social media. That was Plan B.

Plan A was to mail the phone back to Blackberry (which has dozens of addresses. I picked the one I thought looked the most official) and hope the person receiving it would send it to the repair department.

Much to my surprise, a few weeks later, Blackberry customer service emailed to say it had received the phone and was sending it to be repaired. It was couriered back to me – overnight  and fixed – about 10 days later.

While happy that Blackberry fixed the phone, it came back re-locked. Had to spend another $30 to get it unlocked. (Blackberry subsequently provided the unlock code).

Although Blackberry gave me  grief, it’s one of the heroes of this story. It honoured its warranty, which, incidentally, was only 90 days – not the one year that Future Shop advertised. (false advertising???)

Other heroes are: Crackberry Canada, which shipped me a new battery in 24 hours. AWESOME service.

AND Megatronic Cell Phone Services in Vancouver helped me unlock the phone, providing service via email and at its East Vancouver location. Clay Somo is terrific. He can provide unlock codes anywhere in the world via email. @cellphonefixed on Twitter; cellphonefixed on Facebook; email: contact@cellphonefixed.com or http://www.cellphonefixed.com.

Total cost of this misadventure: $30 for unlocking, $50 for battery, $3 postage + envelope and $180 for the phone = $263.

Final words are for Future Shop: screw you to the power of 100.

The letter to Blackberry explaining the defect. Nicely.

The mailing to Blackberry HQ in Waterloo.

All fixed. Thanks Blackberry.

Need an unlock code for your phone? Clay’s the guy. Anywhere in the world.