Japanese carrier damage replacement services are a good idea

Old busted summer 2013 Xperia A and the Yellow Pouch by which it will return to docomo next its replacement – winter 2014 Xperia Z3.

If you tend to be careless with your android phone, or if you are like me and prefer to customize the OS – that is, void the warranty – then it is a very good idea to invest in the replacement delivery service offered by your carrier. This is contrary to the typical advice you may have heard regarding supplemental insurance often pushed by big-box electronic retailers (especially in the US).

One huge difference is that, even if you pay what may appear to be the full price of a phone or tablet, up front at the time of purchase, it is still highly likely you received a large subsidy. In the case that your phone is rendered inoperable due to an incident not covered by warranty (bricked, destroyed, lost), then you will have to pay back the remainder of the subsidy when replacing the device through the carrier. (Otherwise you will have to either pay the full, unsubsidized, ridiculously high price for another carrier-branded phone, or get another one via different means.)

Unlike traditional electronics, the complicated stream by which android updates flow from Google, through the maker, and eventually to the carrier motivates many to purposely void their manufacturer warranty. If the carrier decides not to push an update for a particular model, many people hack the phone and update it themselves. This opens the potential to have repair work of completely unrelated hardware failures denied due to the unauthorized software modifications.

Conversely, how many times have you purchased a subsidized washing machine and how times have you felt compelled to hack said washing machine?

Having a phone replaced

I recently had to replace my docomo Xperia A SO-04E. (This is actually my second time to use the replacement service, as earthquakes are not covered by manufacturer warranty.) A several centimeter-wide strip of touch screen along the left edge of the screen ceased to function. In portrait mode the "Q", "A", shift, and num keys were inaccessible. In normal landscape rotation, the entire bottom row of the keyboard was useless, so I was rotating the phone around in 360˚ circles just to type a freaking sentence. Very annoying.

I went to a docomo store, and to my surprise, found out that the phone was still (technically) under warranty. It was just over two years old but had a three year warranty. I was advised that it was probably best to use the replacement service because under warranty, they would just fix the screen and not replace the swollen battery pack or the missing water-resistant USB cover. It was actually my intention to use the replacement service because I have modified the OS and voided the warranty anyway.

Also entering into my thinking was that there just isn't anything out there now that is very compelling, so I didn't mind to continue to use the same model of phone.

The replacement service costs ¥380/month (unfortunately for summer 2014 and newer models the price increased to ¥500). Over two years and a couple of month, I estimate to have spent about ¥10,000 in total monthly payments. The standard replacement fee is ¥5,000, but I was only charged ¥4,500 (and paid half of that in docomo points).

So I figure I paid under ¥15,000 for a new replacement of a two-year old phone. At the time of writing kakaku.com indicates that this is well below the ¥19,000 - ¥24,000 range for a used Xperia A. Even considering the now-higher monthly cost of the replacement service (¥500), it would still have been a better value than hunting down a second hand replacement (that may or may not be of questionable quality). I spent about 10 minutes on the phone answering questions and agreeing to the terms and conditions of the service, then within 24 hours a new phone was delivered to my door.

Getting Lucky

The Xperia A was not very popular in my opinion. Docomo hyped the hell out of it, but I doesn't appear to have sold well (as evidenced by it being completely abandoned and never updated beyond what was initially promised). I believe it is running Android 4.2. As such, and also given that Nicholas destroyed his Xperia A several times over the last two years, there just weren't any left to serve as a new replacement to mine. Lucky me.

So for less than ¥15,000, the next morning at 10 am, the post office delivered a brand new Xperia Z3 (SO-01G). Improvements over the Xperia A include VoLTE and Android 5. The Z3 is a winter 2014 phone that is still on sale. Upgrading to the Z3 would cost me ¥32,400 AND require me to change to the new, shitty (more money for less) data plan with the unneeded unlimited calling plan for more money than I care to pay each month. The monthly subsidy of ¥54,432 shown in the screenshot below is not available users of the original Xi 7GB data and per-minute calling plan, meaning upgrading to the Z3 would cost a stupid amount of money (¥86,832).

However, since I was just invoking the replacement service, my data/calling plan remains unchanged, and my monthly replacement service fees remains based on the Xperia A, costing the same ¥380 instead of the new ¥500 monthly price. I had paid to have the Xperia A unlocked (what a nightmare that was), so this one arrived unlocked and with a new nano SIM (Xperia A uses a micro SIM).

So, yeah, carrier damage replacement services are a good idea.