I needed to change my phone's screen protector and since it was a Flip (less than a year old), so with a crease on the screen, I decided to have it done by a pro rather than doing it myself. Samsung sent me to a EE store as they deal with some of their "repairs" (I'm not a EE customer).
I won't go in detail of how stressful the whole thing was from start to end, but by far the worst thing that happened was that my phone was factory reset without any prior warning or consent. Yup, just for a film replacement.
The agent told me that a backup was not needed because the technicians "wouldn't wipe the phone just to replace a screen protector". Well yes, that's what I thought too indeed. So I handed in the phone without worrying about it. When I picked up the phone, I had lost all my data and I only had a partial backup. I was told that it's their policy "to factory reset every phone that gets handed in, no matter the reason why it's handed in, because of the GPDR". I wasn't told that BEFORE the "repair" though. When I started complaining I was told this is in the T&C. This is also not true: T&C only talks about accidental data loss. This loss was NOT accidental and no customer would expect their data to be tampered with for a film to be replaced on the screen.
Not to mention, I was only given the T&C AFTER handing my phone in and I wasn't asked to review and sign it. My copy still stands with blank space for signatures. Clearly, if this was discussed with me thoroughly, I would have performed a FULL backup.
Now I know that nothing will bring my data back unfortunately, but it's atroucious they will just refuse any responsibility, not to mention that this practice itself is very questionable, so I am thinking of how I could take this further. Just last year I had a battery changed on my previous phone by another provider and they just asked me to put it into maintenance mode. No data was accessed or lost in the process.
Any advice deeply appreciated.
