Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsScreen lottery/Amazon woes
Reviewed in the United States on May 28, 2016
I am a long time Android user and definitely consider myself a techie. I am an electrical engineer by profession and a consumer technology buff. That being said, I own a lot of technology, be it cell phones, Tvs, routers, video games, NAS, you name it.. It's probably in my house. I really enjoy new tech and reading about new tech. One thing I don't really enjoy, however, is writing reviews. But on this purchase I feel compelled to give a consumer warning to possible customers of this phone.
First things first, this phone in its perfect form is incredible. Even 8 months after launch its still going strong and competitive with the newer releases of 2016. I personally have the galaxy s7 edge and the HTC 10, both of which are excellent android phones. For some reason, however, I find myself reaching for the Nexus 6p to recurve my sim card for the day! It's butterry smooth, even though it sports last year's plagued 810 snapdragon SoC, and the monthly updates are awesome. It has great battery life and the media viewing experience is second to none. The big 5.7 inch amoled display coupled with the dual front firing speakers are a pure joy to consume media on! 64gb worth of storage is the sweet spot for me right now, both in price and capacity for moderate-heavy use (no SD card expansion here). Connection to my network (Tmobile and sprint) is excellent here in Portland and wifi performance is equally stellar. And wow did I mention the build! It's Google first nexus with a machined aluminum body and it's a pleasure to hold in the hand. I especially look ve the cold metal feel when u reach for it in the morning to start my day.
Sadly though, like I said before I am not a person who write reviews often and alas, a review is not the point of this post. The main reason I'm posting this short essay is because of a compelling urge to WARN possible consumers about a particular build quality issue with this phone and my experience dealing with Amazon to remedy the problem.
Here's the issue: the beautiful Amoled screen on this particular phone (Graphite 64gb) has a defect that seems to be quite frequently appearing. The display has uneven color temperature throughout, some worse than others, and is extremely hard to "unsee" once noticed. It's very noticeable on lighter backgrounds, I.e. When you're using email, browsing websites, sms messaging.. The list goes on. What do I mean by "uneven color temperature"? You see blotches of pink on one side of the display, green on another. The white can be two completely different colors from top to bottom or left to right. It's very unappealing to the eye and from my generous research into the problem from various Nexus forums it's quite a well documented issue with the 6p's big amoled display (or at least was at launch).
My first Nexus I recieved from Amazon had this issue extremely badly. I noticed the uneven temperature color's telltale pinks before I had even gotten thru the setup process on the phone. I was understandably upset, and promptly requested a replacement, literally half an hour after receiving the device. Amazons automated return system immediately generated a replacement order and it was shipped out the same day. Yay amazon! Little did I know this would only be the start of my woes. Once I had recieved my 1st replacement, I quickly turned on the device and instantly started inspecting the screen trying to find the same flaw (or lack thereof). Thankfully this display looked considerably better, though not perfect. It was acceptable I would say and I was happy. After a few days of enjoying the phone, it's started having an issue where it would just randomly reboot on me. I was dismayed at my luck and tried refreshing Google latest software image to remedy the problem, but this did not fix the rebooting issue. Even after many device factory resets it still wouldn't stop. So reluctantly I again requested a replacement. This time I was starting to doubt the manufacturing quality of the Nexii, but I loved how the phone felt and operated so I knew i wanted to get a 'working' device. Anyway, the 2nd replacement came quickly, and again within seconds of turning it on I saw the dreaded pink hue. I was really bummed out at this. I went online to research how many people had this much trouble! I even saw a few other reviewers deep in the 400+ reviews of this device here on amazon had similar problems and I found quite a few with the exact same pink problem. At this point i felt pretty down on my luck, but again I dutifully went to amazon to request a replacement thru there automated system.
This is where things went from bad to worse.
This time a replacement was not granted. It just said "Return requested. Your replacement is being handled by customer service department". I figured they'd would take care of me and send me a replacement. But this was not what happened. Actually nothing happened. A few days past and I decided to take it upon myself to talk directly to a customer service representative. The first person I talked to, forgive me for forgetting his name (it was Indian and hard to recall now), told me he was sorry. He said that this problem had been investigated and they had determined that there was a problem with their stock of nexus 6ps. I told him I would just like a replacement, I've taken my chances before I'll do it again. He tried to process the replacement request, but it wouldn't go through (how this happened I do not know). He tried again, saying my address was "deactivated" and that he again couldn't issue a replacement. Frustratingly he couldn't give me a reason why my address had suddenly been deactivated, and curiously it's only deactivated for this device. I've ordered other things since with no issue. At this point I was getting upset. He told me he had a plan. He would refund the full purchase price of the phone(originally funded from my checking card) to a gift card, at which point I could then repurchase the device with the gift card balance. This way I could effectively order a replacement purchase myself and then send the defective phone back. By taking this route I wouldn't have to wait the week or so it would take to wait for them to receive my return, then issue the refund, have the refund clear, then reorder the device. I had a problem with this grand scheme of his, the price of the phone has since increased by 50$ for each model. I told him this, and he said he would simply transfer me to the "Price adjusting department" and I could go about getting the price reduced 50$ to the original buy price. I thanked him profusely at this point, happy I was getting g taken care of. He processed the refund-in-advance and sure enough the 500$+ were there for the spending on a amazon digital gift card in my account. With this transaction conformed, he sent me onto my second contact, the price adjuster, who would price match the phone back to original sale price for me. If this sounds backwards and overly complicated, that's because IT IS!
I was quickly handed off to the "price adjustment department", where the associate said he would look over the previous chat and help me. After a few minutes, the associate spit out a pre-scripted answer that was along the lines of "We try hard to ensure competitive prices at Amazon, however we only price match televisions".
I couldn't believe what I had just read.. Here I am, over an hour talking to another associate in their retail department, and low and behold amazon doesn't price match anything but TVs!? What the heck? How did the first associate not know this was the policy!!?
So in my complete disbelief of the situation, I did a double take of the pre-scripted rejection of my price match request, and asked him a again. I explained my horrible situation and quest to get a working device replacement and the issue with the sale price/refund/hell I've been through so far. He quickly responded with THE SAME PRE-SCRIPTED rejection line! Absolutely no way was I going to be getting a price match.
I was furious at this point. And I threw in the towel. I told him I needed my money to be taken of the new gift card and to be refunded to the original form of payment. He obliged. I exited the chat. Packed up my beloved, if not perfect, nexus. And off I went to the UPS store to bid farewell to a horrendous experience with shopping here at Amazon.com.
Currently, Im waiting for a newly ordered nexus 6p to arrive from Google. Hopefully this time I'll get a non-reactive device. If it wasn't such a wonderful phone at a great price, I would never have went this far. But that's the price I pay for my love of technology.
Amazon really dropped the ball tech support wise. Im very disappointed and will not be ordering large ticket electronics from here again. On another note, when I looked into how come my address had been deactivated for this product, they gave me the excuse that the whole stock of Graphite Nexus 6p 64gb devices had been identified as having a problem and therefore couldn't be ordered from Amazon.com anymore. So buy this model with a caution. Even though I was told you cannot order it anymore, sure enough it's still available to order. Amazon playing Russian Roulette with hard earned dollars of their customers.
I however, am doing playing that game. It's Google turn to make what amazon couldn't make right (and for 50$+ more for my troubles).
