Sent Emerson Tablet to S.T. for warranty repair. Got someone else's tablet (and photos) back!

[DigiDAD]

Re: Sent Emerson Tablet to S.T. for warranty repair. Got someone else's tablet (and photos) back!

My factory refurb also had photos and data. I think they do a Factory reset but fail to delete the Internal memory via Settings/Storage, as just doing a Factory reset myself did not clear them out either.

[SingleDad]

Crazy to receive a tablet with somebodies private stuff. So much for protecting pricacy
Sent from my Nokia Lumia 620 using Foroplex

Fortunately there was nothing except the photos,videos and some downloaded apks! Mistakes happen but you'd think a full wipe and restore would just be standard procedure. Let's hope it was some new guy's first day and not a pattern of doing business

[Damo]

Crazy to receive a tablet with somebodies private stuff. So much for protecting pricacy
Sent from my Nokia Lumia 620 using Foroplex

[elektrik]

[SingleDad]

Like a moron I keep buying my son those economical 4.3" internet tablets from Big Lots, despite the fact he can rarely keep one for more than a few months without destroying it. Kids will be kids!

One of my recent purchases was the Emerson EM543. I think we picked it up around $40.00. Basically a rebranded Polaroid tablet. These aren't the world's most durable tablets so it was no surprise when shortly after buying it the touchscreen stopped responding. After making sure it was indeed the screen and not a software/firmware issue, I wiped the tablet back to factory and sent it in to Southern Telecom for repair or replacement under warranty.

I also included a copy of the receipt along with a typed letter explaining the issue it was experiencing etc.

Once it had been about long enough for me to forget all about it, a small box arrived on our doorstep. Wrapped in a wad of bubblewrap was the tablet. Nothing else was in the box. No packing slip, no explanation of whether or not the tablet was repaired/replaced. Nothing. Just a tablet directly wrapped in a wad of bubblewrap.

Of course we immediately turned it on in order to determine whether they just returned our old defective tablet or whether it was repaired/replaced. My son rejoiced when he found the touchscreen working. About 10 minutes later he brought the tablet to me to set up the internet connection and also to show me "Some other girl's" pictures.

Sure enough there are 170+ pictures and videos of a little girl and her dog. Along with a bunch of apk's in the downloads folder etc. Wow. I suppose it's pretty standard procedure for a company to "refurbish" a product under warranty and send a different refurbished unit back than the one you sent in.

In these circumstances it should also be standard procedure for a company to format and restore the tablet back to factory defaults. At the very least they should be sure no previous owner's images/data etc are on it!

Fortunately the tablet was previously owned by an innocent little girl and none of the pictures or videos were anything inappropriate for my son to see. I'm hoping the poor little girl's parent/guardian had backups of her photos and videos before they sent the tablet in. (She sure seems to love her dog!)

While I'm glad they actually sent a functioning tablet back to us, I'm wondering what sort of company throws a tablet in a box with not so much as a packing slip or a "We fixed it" message. We'll never know whether they actually fixed/refurbished it or they just happened to have someone else's "sort of" functional used tablet laying around and decided to send it to us.