HTC phone/carphone warehouse

A question about : HTC phone/carphone warehouse

My friend has had an HTC phone and 24 month contract for a year. Right from the start, the phone wasnt right. He shouldve took it back but didnt. He phoned carphone warehouse who advised him to phone HTC. The advisor was unhelpful and directly accused him of 'rooting' , tampering, or jailbreaking it. He denied this (he wouldnt know what to do to 'root' the phone). So he has put up with the phone, its slow operating system and lack of updates. Now its almost useless. We took it back to carphone warehouse last week, they sent ti away and its now back, having been looked at by their engineers. Theyve said it has been tampered and is irrepairable. We said its quite likely that as it was like that from day one that they have supplied us with a recon phone but theyve denied this. So, unless anyone here can advise otherwise , he is stuck with this phone for a year.
Very annoyed that theyve accused him of tampering with the phone!

Best answers:

• has he had it unlocked etc. by a phone shop as this would be deemed as tampering
• no, he got the phone on an o2 account at the same time so wouldnt have any need to unlock. Didnt transfer old number or anything, everything from scratch
• Problem has been ignored for far to long .
  User basically accepted the phone and its condition for twelve months .
  Did they say what the actual tampering was ??
  Its usually picked up when working down the repair checklist and on the repair report .
  If you wanted to challenge the vendor under Sale Of Goods Act then the tampering is enough to reject .
• it says on the report 'locked' tampered' but since he has had it its never been locked or unlocked...just got it out of the box, placed the sim and started using it - he shouldve taken it back straight away but as he had phoned HTC and they accused him of breaking it, there didnt seem much point. He's put up with it but its only recently that its becoming so slow that its useless which is why he tried taking it back. They say that they wouldnt have given him a used recon phone but you can never be certain
• Tell him to back up data and factory reset to speed up .