I'm having hassles with MTN and Leaf at the moment too.
I got my first HTC Dream in about August 2009. I had a software issue with it so I handed it in to MTN and they sent it to Leaf in JHB to be sorted out. Since I was told it would take 6-8 weeks and there was a new cheaper contract out for the Dream, I got another one. I figured I would use one as my "stable" phone and the other as my "dev" phone since I am planing on learning to write android apps. My first phone came back and things were fine for a few weeks, but then the first phone started losing connection to the network. I tried reloading the firmware from leaf and the phone stopped booting. A week or 2 later my second phone just stopped working. It was working at lunch and at dinner I saw that that it was off. I tried turning it on and it wouldn't turn on. I thought they battery was dead so plugged it in and the charge light didn't even come on. I pulled the battery out and put it back and it started charging, but wouldn't boot past the first stage of the boot loader. So I took both phones in to MTN at Gateway and they sent them to Leaf in JHB. This was 17 December. 6 weeks later I got the second phone back but not the first. at first it was working ok, but after a few days the SD card slot stopped working, telling me that the SD card is corrupt. I have tested with multiple cards and tested the cards in other readers, the problem is in the phone. The wireless has also stopped working which I seem to remember happened on both phones previously with the 1.5 Firmware. 2 weeks after I got the 2nd phone back, I got a call from MTN JHB quoting me abound R1700 for repairs. I told them it was under warranty and they said it was physically damaged from a fall or something. That was odd as it went in for a software issue. After a long email, they eventualy sent me photos of the phone a week later. The screen was cracked down the middle. This damaged had happened while in the care of MTN. After speaking to some contacts of mine at Leaf in Durban and posting on Hello Peter, I got a responce from MTN saying that they are looking into it but that was over a week ago.
I love the Android OS and the Dream is not a bad phone. I think that Leaf are ill equipped to support it though. It also annoys me that they modify the firmware before giving it to us. I know that they remove some functions from the phone and move some menu options around. For some reason they change the colour of the ticks in the menus too. They need to release firmware update more often to fix issues too. Overseas people get regular updates over the air to fix problems. Why can't we?
I'm getting to the point of wanting to contact HTC directly to complain about the bad service that MTN and Leaf are providing on these phones. Its going to give HTC and their products a bad name .
Right now I don't know what we can do, but it seems that this is more than just a 1 off occurrence.
