“The customer was provided by Xiaomi a Redmi Note 7 Pro unit and a Mi Backpack as compensation for the damaged smartphone and bag due to the battery blast”
Xiaomi has given a free replacement Redmi Note 7 Pro unit to the customer who was affected by the battery blast that 91mobiles exclusively reported on Saturday. Along with the free replacement smartphone, the company gave a Mi Backpack to the aggrieved customer to compensate him for the bag that was set ablaze and destroyed in the fire caused by the exploding Redmi Note 7 Pro unit. The customer received the free products just a day after a Xiaomi service centre in Gurgaon tried to make the customer pay 50 percent of the Redmi Note 7 Pro’s price for a replacement unit.
Vikesh Kumar, the customer whose Redmi Note 7 Pro unit caught on fire, was provided the free Redmi Note 7 Pro and Mi Business Casual Backpack. The smartphone is priced at Rs 9,999 while the bag costs Rs 999.
To recall, we reported on Saturday that Kumar’s Redmi Note 7 Pro unit – which was purchased in December 2019 – started heating up in his pocket on Friday morning last week. When he took it out of the pocket, he noticed smoke coming out of the smartphone body. He threw the smartphone towards his bag and within seconds the handset’s battery blasted, setting the bag on fire.
Kumar approached a Gurgaon-based Xiaomi service centre on Friday. The service centre tried to blame the customer instead, saying the blast was the result of customer-induced damage and asked him to pay 50 percent of the smartphone’s cost for a new unit. However, Kumar refused to take the blame and did not pay. In the job sheet provided to him, the Xiaomi service centre did not even acknowledge that the blast had occurred, only writing that the handset was facing a ‘Power on fault’, not irreparable damage.
After 91mobiles’ report on the matter, Xiaomi reached out to Kumar and gave him the freebies by 6pm on Saturday. The company in a statement also said it has conducted a detailed examination and “it was concluded that the device was already physically damaged before it was brought to the service center.” Kumar maintains that there was no physical damage to the handset before this blast and that it was always charged using only the bundled charger.
However, upon questioning, a company representative clarified that the ‘physical damage’ in the statement refers to the Redmi Note 7 Pro after the battery blast. Nevertheless, the ambiguous phrasing of the statement has led some publications to infer that Xiaomi was claiming that the smartphone was already damaged physically, which led to the blast.
