Battery will not Charge

[Kamen]

So I am having an issue with my wife's EVO and since early last week it will not charge. You plug it in and it basically doesn't recognize the charger. The current workaround is for me to charge my battery to full (I too have an EVO) and put it in her phone and then charge her battery in my phone. I took it to Sprint and they said the charging port came off of the motherboard and it would be a $100 fee to file an insurance claim on it. I passed at the time and decided to do some research and found quite a few people having this same issue and both Sprint and HTC have acknowledged this as a defect and is covered by the warranty. It never has fully worked in the past. Sometimes it will charge to completion and other times we will plug it in walk away and come back to find it is no longer charging.

I just called Sprint to see about getting it covered under warranty and the lady said I have two options. The first would be to just pay the deductible and the second was they would send us a new phone, we send in hers, but if they deem the issue was due to physical damage (which they probably will because they are assholes like that) they would then charge us $500 for the replacement. Neither option is one we are willing to do especially taking a gamble with having to pay out the full price for a new phone. Has anyone had this issue and how did you get them to fix it? It is to the point right now with this and all the other issues we have had with Sprint the last year and a half we are pretty much fed up and thinking of switching. I just hate to pay an ETF because their phone and service aren't working as intended.

 

[Citizen Coyote]

Try a different Sprint store if you can; different techs may tell you different things. My understanding is the $100 deductible only comes into play if the damage was not due to defect but instead physical damage like dropping the phone or such (one reason why I don't like Sprint's insurance program outside of the repair option).

If you've never dropped the phone and the charging port has always been flaky (as you said), then chances are it really is due to a defect and would be covered under warranty. On the other hand, if you've been rough on the phone - maybe dropped it once or twice, tossed it around - then you're probably better off just paying the $100 deductible and getting a replacement as the chances it came loose from abuse are higher. In the end you have to ask which is cheaper: the deductible, or the ETF?