Error 29

This last couple of weeks has been all about fixing things - especially this last week where everything seemed to go wrong. During the middle of the week the website server was hacked and although the site wasn't damaged, it did go offline for around 36 hours. Fortunately the web host technical support guys did a great job of rebooting everything and getting the site back onto the web.

My iPhone problem was a different matter. Around two weeks ago i sent it to get repaired at i-phone-repairs.co.uk. The connector was damaged so i couldn't update the phone software and i decided to have a new battery put in too. I sent the phone off on the Monday and got it back on the Saturday. Not bad i thought. How very wrong i was.

The first thing i wanted to do was get the new Apple iPhone operating system update done. It started off fine and then came up with an error message. After numerous attempts at this with the same error message, i decided to then do a full restore and update. Start from scratch. An error number 29 message came up. By this point i was worried.

After some researching online i discovered a number of people mentioned the battery as being the likely problem. 99.99% of the time it's the battery claimed one forum post. The problem could be caused by a non genuine, cheap or incompatible battery being placed in the phone. So i decided to e-mail i-phone-repairs.co.uk to see what they said. I got this email back.

Dear Mr Richard Flint,
Thank you for contacting us regarding your order, I have looked in to this for you and I can see that the reason you are having these faults are due to the newer versions of software, which are actually intended for the iPhone 4. I am afraid there is nothing we would be able to do to help you on this occasion.

Kind regards,
Vikki

Customer Service Advisor

Hmm not even a trace of 'we'd like to help' there. I sent a second e-mail detailing the issue better and got this email reply from i-phone-repairs.co.uk . This email has been pasted into the post complete with the spelling mistakes from the original email.

Dera Mr Flint,

Thank you for getting back to us with this, I have spoken to one of our supervisors and they have advised that due to the software that has een upgraded on your device there is nothing that we can do, we would like to send our apologies for this and if teher was something that we can do we would however we can not. If you have any furthur questions or queries please do not hesitate to ask.

Kind Regards

Sarah
Customer Service Advisor

Do you get the impression that the reply was rather rushed? It has we don't care! written all over it. From that point on i realised that I had to fix it. I ordered a genuine battery and some tools and did it myself. The result was the iPhone started first time. It WAS the battery causing the fault. On closer inspection it turned out that i-phone-repairs.co.uk had placed into my iPhone 3GS, a cheap non-genuine iPhone 3G battery with the number APN:616-0366 - whereas a 3GS needs a battery with the number APN:616-433 or 435 to avoid unknown Error 29 messages with IOS4.

This is an issue that a repair company should have known about. They probably did but didn't care once they got my money. If they don't know about battery compatibility then that is rather worrying. OK, they repaired the connector socket fine - so far. I'll give them that, but to blatantly not give a toss about after care (or my iPhone), especially when the customer has a problem, is pretty disgusting. People care about their phones and need to trust that they are getting a phone repaired correctly. It's a strange business model to have an iPhone sent for repair by the customer, only to be returned to them with another fault caused by that very business using the wrong components.

Add to that the fact that the cheap 3G battery they put in could have potentially damaged my phone (it got very warm, would not charge properly and caused system restarts every few minutes) i find it hard to recommend this company to anyone. Not even an enemy!