Protection Plans May Help—

Gadget Survey: Many eBugs Can’t Be Fixed

By John Voket

Gadget makers love to sell consumers on all the things their devices can do, whether it is letting them chat with distant friends, or watch movies on their commute. But can anyone fix this stuff when it breaks?

That is a question raised by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, which discovered in a survey released November 16 that 15 percent of people who had some piece of technology break down in the previous year were never able to get it repaired.

The figure was even higher for certain products.

Almost a quarter of cellphone users said they never managed to get their device fixed. And among those who did resolve an issue, a higher percentage either corrected the problem themselves or sought help from friends or relatives rather than call customer service.

“That 15 percent of technology users are sort of throwing up their hands was surprising for us,” said John Horrigan, the author of the study. “You’re talking about close to one in four cellphone users and one in five computer users saying, ‘Hey I can’t cope with this any longer, I’m done.’”

At Newtown Wireless on South Main Street, proprietor Cynthia Dujack helps her customers avoid breakdowns by offering a supplemental protection plan that will either provide repairs, or replace a broken phone with a comparable, operable unit.

“These plans are good for new phones, because you only get a trade-up discount every two years,” Ms Dujack said of typical plans that provide these incentive allowances of $100 or more.

Protection plans Ms Dujack contracts for her Sprint clients cost between $4 and $7 more and are charged directly to the monthly bill. Then, if a phone comes up broken or inoperable, the customer can request a repair or reconditioned replacement after paying a $50 deductible.

“Without a protection plan, a customer with a broken phone would have to pay $194.99 for the lowest priced-full price phone I have in stock today,” she said. “But some of these BlackBerrys or smart phones can be several hundred dollars more to replace.

“So, in almost every situation, it’s less money to use the insurance than to buy a new phone.”

She said in the case clients are eligible, it is sometimes cheaper to replace a broken phone with anew unit than to attempt a repair.

“It depends on the extent of the repair,” she said. “If it’s like, an antennae, they may be able to repair it on the spot...maybe while they wait. If the phone is not reparable, the model is replaced with a refurbished unit.”

Besides cellphones and their higher-end siblings known as smart phones, the Pew survey also covered computers, Internet service, and music players. And while the results are no conclusive verdict on the state of customer care in the digital age, analysts say the figures indicate the growing complexity of technology.

Zachary McGeary, an analyst with Jupiter Research, noted that gadgetry now involves an “increasingly integrated ecosystem of devices.”

In other words, it is not enough anymore for cellphones and computers to simply work on their own. They also have to get along with each other, and swap video and pictures.

As providing technical support becomes more complicated, some companies have started tapping online communities to offer help, taking advantage of tech-savvy customers who enjoy trading tips online. This method can be best for solving problems that involve multiple devices made by different companies, said Lyle Fong, chief executive of Lithium Technologies Inc, which sets up such customer forums for businesses.

For example, imagine you are trying to get one manufacturer’s laptop to work with another company’s printer. “Which company do you call for issues like this?” Mr Fong said.

For all the talk about online communities, however, the Pew survey showed only about two percent of people solved their technology problem online.

About 38 percent of respondents called customer service, 28 percent fixed the problem themselves, and 15 percent got help from friends or relatives.

The rest — about 15 percent — gave up.

Mr Horrigan said that reflected a common thread in the survey: that most people still do not understand the technology they use in their daily lives. For instance, about half of adults who use cellphones or the Internet usually needed someone to show them how to use it or set it up.

Once they were up and running, not all was fine: nearly 40 percent of computer users said their machine stopped working properly at some point in the past year. Almost 30 percent of cellphone users said the same.

Mr Horrigan argues these statistics should sway technology providers to focus harder on making their products more user-friendly.

Associated Press reporting was used in this story.