[rlpb]

"They told us the devices were out of warranty and that replacement (through repair and refurbishing) would cost $153 USD."

This is a common trick attempted by the retail business - to focus on the warranty (where they dictate the terms) rather than your contract (where they often cannot). If you bought the device, you still have a contract of sale with the seller. The details depend on your jurisdiction.

Perhaps in the US the manufacturer can dictate the terms of your contract of sale, I don't know. But here in the UK they cannot - it is statutory.

When I attempted to have a broken Nexus 7 repaired or replaced here in the UK, the store focused on it being "out of warranty". I insisted that I was not claiming under their warranty, but under the contract of sale (the Sale of Goods Act in the UK) where depending on the nature of the goods and the advertised price the store can be liable for up to six years for manufacturing defects. Eventually, after insisting for a while, they made us good with a partial refund to cover the loss of use of the device subsequent to the failure, though it took us a while to negotiate a cash settlement rather than a store credit.

tl;dr: "out of warranty" is not necessarily the end of the story, although I don't know about the US.

[tehwebguy]

Similar story here, both buttons on my iPhone 5 stopped working most of the time. Apple created two separate replacement programs, one for the lock button and one for home button.

Unfortunately mine didn't qualify for either one! I'm not sure if it was the serial number or the date it was purchased, but when I checked online or called in they said my device wasn't part of either program.

This is the line that got my phone replaced: "I don't care about the programs you are describing - your company created them unilaterally so when you tell me I don't qualify it doesn't mean anything to me. What matters is that my phone is failing, if there's nothing you can do about it that really sucks and I feel really screwed over."

Then they replaced it.

[fweespeech]

> tl;dr: "out of warranty" is not necessarily the end of the story, although I don't know about the US.

In the US, there is no "statute" for contract of sale like you have in the UK. Its entirely what is written by the seller [which is the warranty], so yes, it is the end of the story :P

Generally, if its nearly an immediate loss/failure, you can do something more but that is about the only situation. Months/years later its whatever the merchant & manufacturer stipulated.

[dragonwriter]

> In the US, there is no "statute" for contract of sale like you have in the UK.

Depends on the specific US jurisdiction and the particular kind of sale, but this is often false. See, most notably, the Uniform Commercial Code. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Commercial_Code

[jsprogrammer]

>Its[sic] entirely what is written by the seller [which is the warranty], so yes, it is the end of the story :P

It's not entirely about what the seller wrote. It's primarily about the representations the seller made (written or otherwise) about the product and whether the product doesn't meet those representations.

[hammock]

Discussion of the relevant law/code in the US:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implied_warranty

In most states, these warranties last for four years. It's common for them to be disclaimed, though.