Didn't Craig say there was some light glue or sticky-tape holding the case together that makes it obvious it was opened? I've also seen other devices which say "tamper indicating seal inside" or something like that which I've always assumed is some kind of special sticker they managed to get on the inside of the case that breaks when you open it.
Point being that there are solutions that help OPT without affecting the end user.
craigix said:
Tell me, GP32X, what should we do with such units?
If I make a suggestion, will you accuse me of being an "armchair inventor/engineer/business whatever"?
Offer a $50 modders warranty. Current warranty, if you open it, no matter what you do or why, it becomes void; you are under no legal obligation to fix things even if they're unrelated to what the person opening it was doing. The fact that you have been just shows your devotion to the project, but sooner or later something will come along and bite you; most likely someone will have done an obvious mod to the board that resulted in the board itself being fried, and you'll have to say you can't service it "because it was opened" which will run contrary to what you had been doing (ie, servicing them despite them being opened).
Enter the modder warranty. This is an additional warranty that says if the case is opened, it doesn't automatically void the warranty. It is accepted that someone with a modders warranty is going to open it and do something, so those with such a warranty get a little extra scrutiny than just whether it was opened or not. Under the warranty, if a repair is possible, you simply do it. If a repair is not possible, and an exchange must be made, work extra hard to see if there is any chance the mod done could have caused the problem. They've paid $50, that should be worth an hour of your time to investigate the console to the fullest before dismissing their warranty claim completely.
If I were to get a unit with one of these wiggly shoulder buttons, I certainly am not going to open it up to fix it; my warranty is too precious. But, if I could buy a little extra insurance so that if I fix the shoulder button I don't have to worry about whether my nubs go bad or not, I very much would. If I could solder something to the board safe in the knowledge that my extra insurance will replace my battery if it turns out bad, that would make me happy.
Obviously if I'm foolish enough to attempt to desolder the nubs and a few weeks later the nub dies, this is not covered.
As a gesture of good faith to the first 600, those that are at risk of the learning curve in QA, automatically give them this modders warranty, under the belief that they are likely to open the case to tweak the shoulder buttons or reseat the LCD cable, but the future ones should have no such excuse; open the case and your warranty is void.
I would buy such a warranty. I suspect many others would. Anyone that complains about having to pay for such insurance, remind them that you aren't required to do this by law: current warranty is if they open it, it is void, period, and they're certainly allowed to stay with just that if they have no intention of ever opening the case. This warranty is only for those that suspect they might want to tweak things from the inside.
Ideally, only a handful of people will buy it, and of those even fewer will ever actually need to use it. If 1/4 of the people that buy the additional warranty end up using it, and of those 1/2 actually need a replacement (and 1/2 are just a repair), you're still on top.
There's more details to work out, but I think this idea is a good start to solving the problem for everyone: those of us that want to try some modding have a fall back (barring our own mistakes) and you get an easier way to dismiss these obviously open cases as well as a (very small) source of additional revenue.
