How do companies get away with selling expensive and complicated products with only a one-year warranty?

Device makers should protect you from major breakdowns for several years. Instead, they brush you off if you didn’t pay more for an extended warranty.

A case in point: mobile phones. They cost $500 to $1,000, but some don’t last until the end of a two-year deal with a telecom provider.

As a result, you may have contract obligations for a non-working phone — a brick, with no function except as a paperweight — while shopping for a new phone and starting a new contract.

Well, that’s no longer true for the Google Nexus 5X phone made by LG Electronics and the Google Nexus 6P phone made by Huawei. I’ve helped many buyers get free repairs when their phones expired shortly after their warranties ended.

Because of a manufacturing defect, these Google Nexus models can fall victim to a fatal condition known as boot loop.

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The phone keeps trying and failing to reboot when you turn it on. Eventually, its battery capacity is used up and the phone can’t turn itself on again unless the main board is replaced.

Upsetting? You bet.

These owners complained of being passed from Google to LG or Huawei and back. Many said their telecom service providers (Bell, Rogers, Telus, Freedom Mobile) also refused to take responsibility.

I started with LG. The Korean manufacturer extended the warranty to two years, but was turning away many people who bought directly from Google Canada.

Their phones were made in the U.S., so they needed a U.S. address to get repairs under warranty, LG said.

After I sent a bunch of readers’ complaints, LG Canada reached out in April to customers previously turned away. It also gave refunds to those who paid the manufacturer to fix their phones before the new policy was announced.

In late May, I had a commitment from Huawei to repair devices past warranty on a case-by-case basis for Nexus 6P phones purchased in Canada from an authorized channel.

Unfortunately, Huawei did not train front-line staff on the new policy. They told customers that nothing had changed.

Noel Ng, a Star reader, sent me a transcript of his chat with Abraham Rodriguez, in Huawei’s call centre in Mexico, on June 7.

“My Nexus 6P is boot looping and I was told in April it was not covered,” Ng said. “I understand that Huawei has now changed the policy.”

“I would like to apologize for the inconvenience,” Rodriguez said. “Also, for this false information published by this site (referring to the Toronto Star). “At the moment, HQ has not released any information regarding any changes in the warranty policy for this issue.”

Luke Szcezepanski contacted Huawei May 28 about a phone that died 14 months after purchase, and had been sitting in a drawer ever since.

He sent me a screen shot of Chuck Velazquez, a Huawei support agent, who thanked him for his patience.

“It seems that we still do not have any contingency plan to fix the Nexus 6P,” Velazquez said. “In other words, the information that you saw is fake.”

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False information? Fake information? Why didn’t the agents say they didn’t know and would try to find out if anything had changed?

They didn’t have to denounce me for quoting Huawei vice-president Ron Cihocki, who never corrected or retracted what he’d said.

I spent a lot of time advising frustrated owners to try contacting Huawei again. Maybe the answer would be different.

Things picked up by mid-June. Huawei said it had repaired one phone and shipped it back to the customer, while six more phones were en route to its service centre.

Another 32 inquiries were denied because the devices were not purchased through Canadian authorized channels. They were bought from sites such as eBay, Newegg and the Google Store in the U.S.

“Once a product is out of warranty, we cannot commit to a blanket free repair for all Nexus 6P devices,” a spokesman told me.

Finally, I’m starting to hear success stories from customers.

Noel Ng got an email on June 11, saying Huawei would do the repair at no cost.

Luke Sczezepanski got a call on May 29, asking for his phone’s IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity number) and his shipping address.

He sent in his phone and got it back, fixed, 15 days later.

“Looks like the main board was replaced. Hopefully, other unlucky 6P owners will get theirs fixed as well,” he said.

Serge Boivin, who bought a phone for himself and one for his daughter, received two replacement units on June 25.

“I am very happy with the outcome,” he said. “I had given up on getting them repaired last year, but now I have working phones.”

Many readers had already bought new devices. Still, they kept fighting for their right to repairs when a defect arose after the warranty ended.

I hope this success story inspires other companies to supply products that work as intended and last for a reasonable amount of time.

Forcing customers to throw away high-priced gadgets because they cost too much to fix is an economic and environmental disaster.

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