Anyone Know How to Ship a Phone with Non-Removable Li Ion Cell Back to China?

Darned contraband phones.

Have you tried local cell phone repair guys in UK?

Do you have FedEx? UPS? Have you talked to them?

Have you access to anyone from the Chinese embassy in London? Sometimes all it takes is a pointed question.

I don't think it's contraband. It's made by a cheap Chinese manufacturer, and doesn't claim to be anything else.

"Have you tried local cell phone repair guys in UK?"

I guess I'll have to if I can't return it or get enough information from the company to fix it myself. I've packed and unpacked it so many times now I'm leaving it in wraps 'til I'm certain I can't return it.

"Do you have FedEx? UPS? Have you talked to them?"

I'm pretty sure they'll say the same thing: the seller warned me off them when they originally told me to send it back. Maybe the Royal Mail has taken a little longer to catch on.

"Have you access to anyone from the Chinese embassy in London? Sometimes all it takes is a pointed question?"

That sounds like a plan. I'm guessing that the regulations were introduced to make it difficult to sell into China. When they realise that they're damaging their export market they may reconsider. I wonder how I "make contact"?

Ask your local MP?

Thanks James,

I already found a contact in the commercial department of the UK Chinese embassy, and, sent him an EM.

Good luck, hope it works out!

DHL is worth asking.

I got a reply from DHL:-

Dear Randall,

Thank you for your email.

Mobile phones can only be shipped to China if they are being sent on an approved DHL account. If you do not have an account with us, unfortunately, we cannot ship the phone.

Please accept my apologies for any inconvenience caused.

We are sorry, Uncle Albert, but we have had a thing all day,

We are sorry, Uncle Albert, and it looks like it is gonna rain.

Uhg. Sorry.

Perhaps you can locate someone with an approved account and work out a deal? Perhaps one of those 'ship it here' stores?

Hopefully you paid with a credit card and can start a payment dispute for the defective phone.

At the moment the seller is still cooperating, so, I don't want to antagonise them. I hope it doesn't come to that.

About $250: which is far more than I can afford to just throw away.

"The battery must be able to be removed, possibly by a cell phone repair tech."

That sounds like a good idea. I'll try that if all else fails.

I found a teardown review: the case looks pretty difficult to open but the battery is the first thing they remove: looks pretty simple.

So that's looking like a distinct possibility.

And of course there's a chance I'll find a loose touch screen connector.

...or create a loose one. Good luck. Heck, it's only a £250 lesson!

The seller agreed to let me remove the battery myself.

What none of the teardowns I watched explained properly is that the battery is glued down using strips like 3M command strips.

You need to get hold of the tabs with small pliers and pull them very gently outwards; the strip then stretches and thins so that it gradually releases itself under the battery.

I didn't get it at first and tried to pull the tab up and it broke. Fortunately I realised what to do with the second one; it came out neatly, and, I could easily get right under the battery to pry off the remaining strip.

Live and learn I suppose.

How does the seller ship the new phones, by slow boat?

No, the slow boat is TO China, not from China. LOL

<...$250...> _{[USD assumed]} Bloody hell! Is it gold-plated or something?

The moral of this story is, if one wants to be covered by local sales-of-goods legislation, then buy from a supplier in the same country.

That's quite cheap for a phone with a similar spec.

I paid more than twice that for phones for both my son and wife: which is why I can't afford a decent one myself .

Ebay is now petty good at protecting customers, and, at the moment the seller is still cooperating.

The problem is this new regulation, which I suspect is going to start causing a lot more agro. unless it's sorted.

So, it makes telephone calls. What on earth other than that does it do that makes it worth that much (rhetorical question - NNTR)?

Hmmm,

I know you said no need to reply, but, I think I made about 20 pence worth of calls last month. It's handy to have the phone incorporated so I don't have to carry two devices but I want my smart phone for all the other things it does.

You really should at least try a cheap one: like say a Cubot:-

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cubot-Smartphone-Capacitive-Touch-Screen-720pixels-Quad-Core-x/dp/B01LQ5A7V4/ref=sr_1_23?s=telephone&ie=UTF8&qid=1501013941&sr=1-23

for £61.

Once you've got Kindle on there; a free map of the world; a decent calculator, and a "light" offline version of Wikipedia, and a few other apps., you'll begin to see the advantages.

BTW I never use data: everything I have on my phone is offline (downloaded with wifi) so once I've paid the upfront cost all it costs me is the 20 to 30 pence per month for phone calls.

If smartphones hadn't started incorporating cameras, a camera with the same power would be costing you more than the cost of the phone.

Thanks,

Good advice. And if they can't fix it they can probably remove the battery.

This sounds like a good subject for an article to be published in some popular tech magazine...make sure to disclose all the details of the manufacturer, phone model etc.

The answer is sad, never buy any Chinese products above your "pain" level.

I had a recent problem with a really great GPS that suddenly stopped working.

But sending stuff back (done it twice) rarely helps, as the (so they say! but you cannot tell from here!) Chinese post office loses everything....so adding postage costs just increases your costs....and losses.

I got the GPS for a hammer price, around $40, so I decided to keep al the bits and pices that came with it (already used most bits with a great Tom Tom I got given missing all its bits!) and just junk the unit (or eventually sell it as defective on ebay). It really was great. While it worked!!

I bought a Phablet from a Chinese seller here in Germany, that had no legal method (only rooting, then no guarantee left if rooted!) to allow the external SD card to be used as program memory, and the reason I bought it was to use it as a big screen GPS with free Android software.

Simply not enough internal memory to hold the program.

The Chinese seller had a 30 day return policy, in Germany, with no questions asked. I used it and got my money straight back. Lucky....

I do use Banggod and TMart occasionally, but nothing they have sold me has stopped working....yet!

Sorry to be the bringer of bad news.....but don't throw good money after bad.

Also, Post your experiences with the unit on websites to warn others that live in your country.

Also read such infos, before buying anything anywhere....

So how did the phone get to you?

Wow, really bad situatiation. How did you buy that phone, which website? Don`t they have refund? I guess repairement would cost less money then sending it back. I`ve had a similar situation,also got a phone from china with some defects. Actually it was a camera defect. First I asked for a refund, but didn`t get it. So I decided to fix it. My father advised me iphone repair singapore. This guys just replaced my camera module. The repairment did not cost me big money, and i was satisfied with quality of new module. Also a three months warranty was a nice benefit.

Just to wrap up a bit: in the end I removed the battery myself and shipped the phone without battery back to the suppliers who refunded the full cost, even though I had gone well past the time limit.

Thanks to all who joined in.