New Motorbike & Broken Phone Drama
I recently bought a new motorbike and managed to drop my phone while riding it. Oh joy.
I've been having a pretty tough time in work recently and, as a result, in my personal life too. So I decided to do something for myself - I bought myself a new motorbike. Not just any motorbike though, I decided to throw caution to the wind and bought myself a brand new BMW S1000 XR TE with pretty much every optional extra included.
Why not? We're only here once, and I can afford it. 🤷♂️
My wife was fully supportive and thought it would be good for my mental health - getting out on the bike is always a good way to lighten my mood.
Anyway, one of the options that the bike came with is the BMW sat nav preparation kit. At the recommendation of the BMW salesman, I decided to go with the BMW mobile phone caddy, instead of the full BMW sat nav.
They both connect to the same connector, and by using the BMW app on my phone, I can get 80% of the full sat nav functionality for around 1/3 of the price. So I bought one and connected my phone - which worked fantastically.
That was, until one day last week when I was riding to work and the music in my helmet suddenly turned off - I looked down and my 3 month old iPhone 16 was gone. 😳
I immediately did a u-turn to go hunting for my phone and I found it a little further down the road, glistening in the morning sunshine. Problem is, a van was heading towards it...and yes, the van hit my fucking phone square on with its tyre.
It was utterly fucked. The back was so smashed that it had multiple holes in it. But miraculously, the screen still worked.
My wife had an old iPhone, so I switched to that and called my insurance company. After a £100 excess charge, the phone was picked up, repaired and returned to me within 48 hours. What an excellent service!
Problem was, when I got the phone back, all the bezel still had chunks of aluminium missing and lots of scratches. I called the insurance company and they said they only repairs faults, not cosmetic damage.
Fair enough.
Complaining to BMW
I'm now £100 down for the excess on the repair, and I'm left with a phone that's full of scratches. So I called BMW to see what they can do about it, considering it was their recommendation for the caddy, and their recommendation to take the phone out of its case so that it "holds the phone properly".
I have to say, they were brilliant. They immediately apologised - even though it wasn't really their fault; they never set out to destroy my phone - and asked me to leave it with them. A couple days later the salesman called me back and said I have 2 options:
- Give them the caddy so they can send it to BMW to see if it's faulty
- They can pay for my initial service (around £250)
I obviously went with option 2. Not only that, but they said if I take the bike to them first, they will take it to their service centre for me, and will give me any bike from their fleet for the day. Obviously I'm going to pick the M1000R when that happens! 🙃
Since smashing my phone, I've decided to just throw more money at the problem and bought the official BMW sat nav - that locks into place with the bike's key, so I doubt I'll be losing that any time soon (I better not - it cost nearly as much as my iPhone).
How's the bike?
Bloody brilliant! The weather has been great here for the last week or so, so I've been out on it pretty much every day. I love it, and it's really helping me to find a balance. The good weather also means that I'm starting to spend time in the garden too, which is really helping as well. Fresh air + exercise in the garden doing things I enjoy = lots of endorphins.
All in all, I'm in a much better headspace than I was a few weeks ago, I just wish it hadn't resulted in me smashing my phone. 🙃
Want more?
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