RMA question, Touch screen dead spots, fragile?

[maxburn]

Question: Sony chat support told me to restore the phone and they say there is a process in the "sony bridge for mac" software to initiate a RMA for repair. Is that true or am I getting the runaround? I'll give it a try in a day or two when my replacement phone I bought gets here, I can't afford to wipe out the memory on my phone right now.

History:
I just realized the other day that I'm having a lot of trouble selecting and editing text and swiping horizontally, I tried out a touch screen tester and sure enough I have some bars through the top half of the screen that don't respond to touch anymore.

I think, but I'm not sure, that a small fall caused it, it fell off a chair to a linoleum floor. The phone was in a TPU Ringke Fusion case plus a tempered glass screen protector and seemed well protected, it has no visible damage and actually looks new. I've dropped many other phone in similar situations and never had an issue.

 

[maxburn]

I was getting the runaround, neither the chat support nor the restore software sony has starts the RMA process. The only way Sony RMA starts is over the phone, and because I bought online before the US release they can't grantee any fast turn around.

I really miss the Z3C, I have a temporary Samsung AT&T S5 and I just think the ROM blows. Don't know how people live with that crap.