Garland and her husband have the same Android smartphone from Virgin Mobile, the Motorola Triumph. It’s supposed to be a pretty nice phone, and wasn’t cheap, but both of their phones had some issues. So get a warranty replacement and be on your way, right? Only it wasn’t just one replacement. Garland is now about to receive her fourth replacement phone, and her husband his third. That’s a total of seven defective phones so far. The phones suffer from a variety of problems, ranging from random reboots to poor reception to–worst of all–not recharging at all for no clear reason. They’d like Virgin to perhaps consider sending them a different, less crappy phone next time. They won’t.

Welcome to Smartphone Replacement Purgatory, where mobile phone carriers send you defective phones over and over until buy a new phone elsewhere, re-up your contract, or leave for another carrier.

Dear Virgin Mobile,

Enclosed is my 2nd replacement for my Motorola Triumph which did not charge out of the box at all, the problems with my 1st and 2nd phone were charging port related also. I have had a total of 3 Motorola Triumphs and am waiting on my 4th now. My husband has been through 3 replacements (making a total of 7 Motorola Triumphs that have passed through our home) all of which have the same charging port issue.

The reason I needed the 1st, and this replacement, was due to the charging port issue which is a known manufacturer’s defect with this device caused by a lack of solid soldering in the charging port. It is not related to the battery or cables that I use as those charge other devices or are able to be charged in another Motorola Triumph. I am going to continue using my 1st replacement device, as it’s charging is unpredictable but possible at this time, until I get another replacement. I hope in the meantime the phone doesn’t stop charging all together. I understand that your policy is to only replace a device with the same model. This works for people who are having random difficulties with a single device or for issues that are with a small batch of of a model or other minor issues with a device. Unfortunately in this case, each of the 7 phones that have come into our home have had the same problem as it is a manufacturer’s defect. After only a few weeks, the phone begins to be tricky to charge unless it is laid flat and will not charge in a vehicle at all due to this. Considering this is also used as my GPS, this is a huge inconvenience. There are sometimes days when I cannot get the phone to charge no matter what charger, cable or how I lay the phone down and then I am able to get it to charge if it’s placed “just so” again a few days later. These have caused blackouts for my service use and have been the cases each time when I called and requested a replacement.

The reason it took me so long to open and activate this model is because it is very time
consuming to do these switches from phone to phone and I lost a lot of information and this time I wanted to make sure that didn’t happen again. It took me three hours to find a solution for this and when I finally activated the new phone it was only in time to find out that the phone wouldn’t charge out of the box.

I will now await another of the same model which I fear will produce the same results. This is a major issue as it affects my ability to use my service when needed and can be a safety concern when I am traveling. I am leaving on a trip on June 13th where I will need my phone and it’s data plan but am concerned this will not be available to me due to this charging issue. Other known issues with the Motorola Triumph are:

● GPS is slow to find a fix, often loses fix, or is unable to get a fix at all. (I have rarely been able to use my GPS due to the charging issues.)
● Phone Randomly Restarts (I have had this with both my models.)
● Has little or no signal when other Virgin phone have full bars, drops calls, unable to connect to internet or send image messages even when reception is reported. (I have had this with both my models.)
● Non-User viewable or editable log file fills memory requiring factory reset. (Had this issue and had to reset my phone, this was a huge inconvenience.)
● Phone quickly, or sometimes immediately, becomes difficult to charge and finally loses the ability to charge what so ever. Phone must be replaced. (My main reason for the all of my replacements.)

This phone needs recalled or retired and vouchers provided to all users for the purchase
price of the phone or a similarly priced replacement (eg. HTC Evo V 4G – the only suitable replacement, the current flagship phone to replace the seriously flawed previous flagship phone).

If replacing a device with only the same model is your policy for replacing a single defective device, then what is your policy for manufacturer’s defects on an entire model line?

Respectfully,
Garland

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