SE Service Center in California, USA ?

I also live in California and would love the new firmware, but I don't know where to find/look for a service center... Anyone able to help?

There is only 1 official SE service center in the US. It's located in Chanhassen,MN. You must call the SE customer support number in order to get a case # issued. However, there are idenpendent service centers all over the US that do perform upgrades for a fee (~ $25-$40 USD). So if you find any center that offers a fee, then they are not techincally liscensed as an offical SE service center. The SE center performs all upgrades/services for FREE pending that your unit is under warranty. Read the threads on this...

Also if you wish there are some members on this board (including me) that have the capability of flashing the P800s. Explorer the methods mentioned above first.

thanks a lot BigFeat for the info. Let me try the customer center and if it doesn't work, then I will contact you. btw, where are you located ?

I work in LA and I live in bay area. Anybody in bay area or LA who can do this ?

thanks,
Forrest.

[quote="Forrest"]Has anyone got their P800 upgraded to R2D in California/USA ?. If so, could you please share the details (Service Center Location/experiences) ?

thanks,
Forrest[/quote]

Yup, got my P800 upgraded to R2D last week by a company in Mission Viejo (South of Los Angeles). The guys are cool, the upgrade is $25 and you can either bring it in and wait (upgrade is sloooow - takes 90 mins) or mail it in if you can stand to be without your phone.

Visit Virtual Dynamix at http://gsm.virtualdynamix.com/

/Strider

[quote="Forrest"]thanks a lot BigFeat for the info. Let me try the customer center and if it doesn't work, then I will contact you. btw, where are you located ?

I work in LA and I live in bay area. Anybody in bay area or LA who can do this ?

thanks,
Forrest.[/quote]

I'm in the Midwest at the moment... I should only be used as a last resort. I have flashed only 4 units thus far, but I can not provide a guarantee to owners. One word of caution is that a lot of these places can not provide the manufacturer's warranty services if something goes wrong during flashing. The safe bet with the SE center is that they are responsible 100%. Moreover, when something goes wrong or they can't fix it they always give you a replacement. The company that the other member posted below is supposedly going to convert to an official SE service center. Which means they will upgrade units for free only if it's under warranty. However, the guys I spoke to told me that this conversion was supposed to take place at the beginning of May. It is now close to June and I don't think they can handle the volume for service anyway.. But great place if you don't mind spending $25USD +...

Virtual Dynamix is an authorized SE service point for both firmware upgrades and repairs. Firmware upgrades through us are safe and covered under the manufacturers warranty if something goes wrong. We charge $25 for the firmware upgrades.

We have just become a mechanical service point as well. This means that we can repair cracked screens...

We are located between LA and San Diego. We are not overwhelmed and can welcome a lot more traffic. Our turnaround time is 1 business day.

I'm curious... Why the charge for units that are under warranty? I was under the assumption that once you guys have fully converted you had to honor the same service performance as the SE center in Minne. With that said Why hasn't the SE customer support center haven't recognized you guys as a service point? I guess ther must have been a misunderstanding. To be an official SE point all services performed under manufacturer's warranty should be FREE. I just want members to be aware of that.. I personally got my P800 upgraded for free at the MN center, but I don't think most members know that their warranty should save them some dollars. With that said I guess you guys aren't seeing the volume because you are charging. Nevertheless I think it is an option that should be explored by those that live in the area..

All warranty work is free, but right now firmware updates are not covered under warranty work. You can get firmware updates in other countries for free, but it is not an official policy to give out free firmware updates.

Right now, Service Points do not get compensated for firmware updates from SE. The firmware updates take over an hour to complete. There are expenses involved. Though it would be nice, it is not reasonable to do this for free.

The service center in MN is not supposed give out free firmware updates, unless it is marked as a mandatory upgrade. They will come out with a firmware update service that charges for nonmandatory upgrades as well.

[quote="Bigfeat"]I'm curious... Why the charge for units that are under warranty? I was under the assumption that once you guys have fully converted you had to honor the same service performance as the SE center in Minne. With that said Why hasn't the SE customer support center haven't recognized you guys as a service point? I guess ther must have been a misunderstanding. To be an official SE point all services performed under manufacturer's warranty should be FREE. I just want members to be aware of that.. I personally got my P800 upgraded for free at the MN center, but I don't think most members know that their warranty should save them some dollars. With that said I guess you guys aren't seeing the volume because you are charging. Nevertheless I think it is an option that should be explored by those that live in the area..[/quote]

It would be strange for the MN center to start charging all the sudden. I've been using their services for the past few years (12 SE phones).

The overall argument is that firmware and software revisions are made to include enhancements and to iron out bugs in a unit. So as long as you're in warranty the company is always obligated to make necessary provisions to make your unit function as it should. I agree that the unit may function properly without an upgrade, but in my case and several others I argued that the unit had problems and the the new upgrades could remedy the issues. My assumptions were correct and SE agreed with me whole hardedly on this and expressed that they were obligated to do whatever it takes (including free firmware upgrade - under warranty) to make my unit function properly. With that said I don't think other countries are being "nice" for upgrading for free. They understand that upgrades are not usually an esthetic make-over, but a neccessity at times. As long as anyone that calls in uses that argument I guarantee SE will not contest the fine lines of your warranty and charge you.. I mean why would they start doing this with the P800 all the sudden?

BTW: I have purchased my own flashing kit so I'm well aware of the labor and expenses involved, but who cares. I am in no way encouraging people to stray from the services of any companies listed in this forum. However, I think anyone/company should inform customers that they can get the same service performed for "FREE" under their warranty in the US. For out-of-warranty owners then they would end up paying a fee with any service center (including the MN center). But being that no one has owned a P800 for more then a year I'm guessing everyone has a choice of getting it done for free or for fee.

I have upgraded twice at the Minesotta center. Once a bugfix of R1d when i really wanted an upgrade and the other last week. I send it on tuesday and received it on tuesday and that's during Memorial day weekend. Not only the upgrade was free but the second time they paid for all shipping and handling fees because of the misunderstanding regarding the first upgrade.

Now I have R2F!! I'm very happy with their service and they did tell me that firmware upgrades are normally free. I used to have a t68 and they never charged me.

Once again, thanks a million <b>Bigfeat</b> for sharing this information with us. I agree with Bigfeat that all the software updates ( since SE is not doing favour to us, they just are fixing their buggy software for which we have already paid lot of money!). So, VirtualDynamix is an authorized service center, then all the firmware upgrades and anything under warranty should be free. And, this is not the first and last upgrade for this phone since there are so many things that should have been implemented right the first time. So, it's not fair to expect to spend $25 everytime there is a new version of firmware. For example, I thought R2D was the latest, but as you can see in previous posts, R2F is already out. So, there goes my $50!.

Rick,
looks like there are lot of people in LA area who has P800 and there are not many places who can offer services for P800. Here is your chance to be the leader and popular by doing the right thing. So, you might loose $25 if you do it for free, but you can expect lot more business from customers since as I said earliar there are not many SE service centers in this area. So, this is internet age, the word spread pretty quickly and you can be pretty popular pretty quickly and do more business.

btw, is R2F the latest ? what are the differences between R2D and R2F ? does it include UIQ 2.1 ?. I saw the pictures of 2.1, it looks awesome ?

thanks a lot gusy. This has been great help.

-Forrest.

No, it is not 2.1 I have R2F and it is great. As far as I have been told the difference with R2d is minimal and it just fixes some extra bugs, one of the is supposed to be memory and battery functionality.

However this is info taken from other forums not from SE and since i never had R2D I can't tell for sure what improvements have been made.

I can tell you this. U to now it is very stable, Internet and Bluetooth are faster. Calendar is debugged and camera definatelly is improoved.

All this compared to R1D, My previous system.
😉