I'm new on the "Won't buy another Pixel phone". Both my wife's and my phones (5a) just died out of the blue, within a few months of each other. Hers just a day before warranty expired. I'd had niggles with an earlier generation Pixel that had me starting to ask questions about future purchases, but the 5a experience really put the nail in that coffin.
It was a pain to get mine repaired by them. They sent me to a "local" repair shop (40ish minutes drive away), who despite being their only authorized repair shop in the area, couldn't get any parts off Google for it, and wouldn't for months to come (and indicated this is just a constant story for them, and that what I was seeing was very common). Google essentially wasted a bunch of my time driving back and forth to repair shops. Then I had to send it to them and it sat unacknowledged (despite having delivery confirmation) for well over a week. They did at least send me a complete replacement, but my assumption has to be it's going to do exactly the same thing again.
For my wife's phone, they argued that because I clicked a wrong button in their repair website despite logging the phone as broken in time that it died after the warranty expired. I had a long argument with them, then gave up and decided I'd take my trade elsewhere.
In both cases, their attitude towards me as a customer was absolute bullshit. I've never had to work so hard to get someone to acknowledge that a phone could stop working, without having done anything to it.
I like the hardware and the pure Android experience as an end user. I'm not willing to deal with hostile customer support to get it.
The 5a has a failure problem[1]. Both of ours failed as well. After the second failure I demanded an Advanced Exchange rather than deal with the repair shop that has no parts in stock. Google replaced my 5a with a 6a immediately. It was a much different experience than waiting a month for the first repair (which failed). I would never accept anything other than an Advanced Exchange at this point.
In what way did it die? My wifes 4a stopped reading the sim card, any sim card. Even after a factory reset. Its over two years old and I haven't bothered to try and argue for a replacement yet. She's moved to Samsung Flip as its even smaller (when folded) and not a pixel.
Really disappointing, I've never had the sim card reader just fail like that. I guess its a cheap component thats died.
It was a pain to get mine repaired by them. They sent me to a "local" repair shop (40ish minutes drive away), who despite being their only authorized repair shop in the area, couldn't get any parts off Google for it, and wouldn't for months to come (and indicated this is just a constant story for them, and that what I was seeing was very common). Google essentially wasted a bunch of my time driving back and forth to repair shops. Then I had to send it to them and it sat unacknowledged (despite having delivery confirmation) for well over a week. They did at least send me a complete replacement, but my assumption has to be it's going to do exactly the same thing again.
For my wife's phone, they argued that because I clicked a wrong button in their repair website despite logging the phone as broken in time that it died after the warranty expired. I had a long argument with them, then gave up and decided I'd take my trade elsewhere.
In both cases, their attitude towards me as a customer was absolute bullshit. I've never had to work so hard to get someone to acknowledge that a phone could stop working, without having done anything to it.
I like the hardware and the pure Android experience as an end user. I'm not willing to deal with hostile customer support to get it.