‘Cellular Phone Bugs’ Emergency

Mr. Kim (27), who is working for a clothes company was embarrassed on the 4th because of the cellular phone. He expected an important business phone call but his cellular phone did not work abruptly. The cellular phone showed ‘Service error’ message and it became no use. Already, the cellular phone meant an ‘essential communication device for his life’ to him. Kim could not manage to do his task in time because he did not have the customer`s wired phone number. In addition, he lost all the phone numbers which were restored in his cellular phone.

The next day, he visited a costumer center of his cellular phone manufacturing company and claimed strongly, but he was only explained with complicated and special terms that “It was a system failure caused by a cellular phone bug.”

While 30 million or more cellular phones are used domestically and become a major communication device outdoing wired phones, users have many troubles due to frequent bugs in cellular phones.

‘Bug’ refers to a ‘primary defect’ which originated in designing or programming process, not in manufacturing process. Therefore, manufacturing companies or service companies are responsible for it, but they are just trying to hide it. If a bug is confirmed in PC programs, immediate countermeasures are usually practiced by the manufacturers. However, cellular phone companies are passing the inconvenience caused by the bugs to consumers.

Kang Hyun-gu (22. a university student) spent 60 thousand won to have his cellular phone fixed last year because he cannot hear anything through his cellular phone frequently. Later, he was very angry after he happened to know that the manufacturing company is responsible for that.

Mr. Lee (33), who worked for a cellular phone manufacturing company`s Development Department said, “Manufacturers also know that the cellular phones have frequent failures. This is because the companies put on sale products which are not fully examined hurriedly due to a sharp market competition.”

The problem is that the manufacturers still respond lukewarmly to this.

A worker from LG Telecom Customer Center says, “There is no problem if the cellular phones are upgraded periodically. We repair cellular phones and charge no expense. What is the problem?”

A worker from Samsung Anycall Technology Department said, “We acknowledge that we failed to give wider publicity about bugs. However, it is impossible to fully explain to customer whenever we sell a single product.” A worker from KTF said, “Current technology cannot solve certain bug problems. In addition, it is not easy to explain ‘there might be a problem’ to customers whenever we sell a single product which costs several hundred thousands won.”

As the manufacturers hide the problems consistently, many users are spending their own money to repair their devices, not knowing it is because of bug. In relation to this, anti-clubs are forming in the Internet to protest against cellular phone manufacturers systematically.

In an anti-site against N company, more than a thousand victims are preparing ‘recall’ requests in earnest. Members are chiefly claiming about low transmission rate in downloading music or sending and receiving messages. Park Jae-ha (42) who made an anti-site against S company said that sometimes LCD is crushed and when one used the cellular phone more than 10 minutes, the phone get heated and turned off suddenly and stop working.

Lee Chul-woo, a lawyer said, “According to the Product Liability Law, a consumer can call for the company’s responsibility regardless whether the company made a mistake or not, if the product has a flaw which is not caused by the consumer. If the company failed to fully explain the possibility of this kind of problem, the company did not fulfill an obligation to explain under the contract.”

Sun-Woo Kim sublime@donga.com