Comment by woodson
10 days ago
Sounds like the same farce as with the forced Pixel 4a update. Not sure if they learned anything from that, other than to ignore the issues and move ahead anyway.
10 days ago
Sounds like the same farce as with the forced Pixel 4a update. Not sure if they learned anything from that, other than to ignore the issues and move ahead anyway.
I'll have you know I did successfully claim my $50 from that refund program they did for the 4a.
> "enter your sn in this form to see if you qualify"
> enter sn
> "great, you'll hear from us in 2 weeks"
> 2 weeks pass
> "you're eligible! you can either have $50 or $100 towards a new phone"
> just bought a new phone, give me the 50
> "great, you'll hear from us in 2 weeks"
> 2 weeks pass
> "we use a 3rd party to issue refunds, download their app"
> download app
> setup account
> verify account
> enter bank info
> "great, you'll hear from us in 2 weeks"
> 2 weeks pass
> "sorry, we couldn't process your bank info"
> dammit, forgot app password
> recover app account
> re-verify app account
> reenter banking info
> "great, you'll hear from us in 2 weeks"
> 2 weeks pass
> "your bank info is verified. You'll get your refund within 2 weeks"
> 2 weeks pass
> money deposited
barely even worth it.
Alternatively I went with:
> "enter your sn in this form to see if you qualify"
> "Your pixel 4a does not qualify"
But why? Does it mean my battery is unaffected or their lawyers managed to weasel out of all the phones qualifying somehow?
Who knows? Well google certainly knows, but they ain't telling me.
from https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/07/a-mess-of-its-own-ma...
Perhaps your Pixel 4a had a non-Lishen battery? But if Google degraded your battery perf as well, then I have no idea.
Same with my Pixel 6a. I wish they would provide more details about why it doesn't qualify.
I know that this is the outcome they're hoping for, but my usual behaviour is:
> Do nothing
It makes me a little bit mad but having $50 'stolen' from me just feels like par for the course these days.
Yeah, that killed my battery... at least it got me a free battery replacement, even though actually getting that locally was a bit of a pain. Couldn't "reserve" or make an appointment ahead. Just call uBreakIFix and if they had one, come in. That Google did the release that broke the batteries after they had recalled all the spares from the fixit companies was really poorly timed.
Still using my 4a, though have been thinking of a switch to the 9XL.
The Google Pixel 6a was released on July 21, 2022. A perfectly fine phone artificially obsoleted in 3 years? Time to switch to Apple?