I just wrote a long response but hit the wrong button and lost it. Here's the short version:
1) Selling a phone and disclaiming all responsibility for the purchase is not commonplace anywhere.
2) The failure is in the implementation, not the idea of selling unsubsidized phones. You have been able to buy unlocked and unsubsidized phones on Amazon and other places in the US for a long time.
3) This is a disaster for Google. HTC has broken customer service systems - they can't even send out fedex return labels, as one example - and they were wholly unprepared for this process. HTC is used to having a carrier to handle the returns and servicing on the front end.
4) It is much easier to deal with your own carrier for service, repair, and returns, particularly T-Mobile, then having to deal with the train wreck that is HTC. And Google simply casts off any responsibility altogether.
This process was not well thought out - if Google wanted to put all responsibility for the product on the manufacturer, they should have chosen a manufacturer which could handle the process better than HTC. When my Canon camera had an issue I sent it to Canon and within a week had it back. Entirely different experience than dealing with HTC.
If Google wanted to do this right they would have sold the phone as an entirely Google branded phone and handled everything themselves, like Apple-iPhone and Amazon Kindle. I'm not sure why Google is even involved in this process the way it has been implemented.
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