HTC phone repair goes wrong

My wife took her HTC mobile phone into a shop called Stuf-it for a repair in February.

The shop employee told her what he thought was wrong with it and she told them to fix the phone. For the next four months, my wife was fobbed off with excuses as to why the phone was not fixed.

When she got fed up with the excuses in July, she was told to take away the unrepaired phone because one of the guys in the shop had taken the phone apart without the "technician" knowing.

Now this mysterious technician would not touch the phone. But we can see the phone has been tampered with; one of the screws is a different size and silver instead of black. Another screw has been screwed too far into the casing.

Barry Johnson

This is a difficult case to resolve. Mrs Johnson is adamant that the phone was given back to her by Stuf-it after being tampered with and cobbled together with the wrong screws by one of the company's employees.

Richard Harwick, owner of Stuf-it, says this did not happen. He admitted the company had kept the phone for too long but this was only because the technician carrying out the repairs was reluctant to handle the phone.

He claimed Mrs Johnson became abusive and was told to pick up her phone. He added that Stuf-it had not tampered with the phone and the damage was caused by someone else, entirely at Mrs Johnson's behest.

So we have an impasse here. Stuf-it did keep the phone too long and because of this the company could find it hard to prove it didn't damage the phone.

If Mrs Johnson has a strong enough case, the only recourse now is the small claims court. If she feels she can prove the damage was cause by Stuf-it, she can say the ‘attempted' repair or examination was in breach of the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982 (as amended).

This law requires businesses to carry out services with reasonable care and skill, in a reasonable time (where no timescale has already been agreed) and charge a reasonable price (where no price has previously been agreed).