Amazon's Prime Exclusive program is a great way of getting a new phone at a discount. As long as you're an existing Prime member, you can choose from a wide range of phones that Amazon sells for anywhere from 5 to 10 or even 20% cheaper than their usual retail value.
The catch? You'll have to put up with a handful of Amazon services pre-installed on your phone, ranging from Kindle and Alexa to Amazon subsidiaries like Goodreads, IMDb, and Audible. This is a pretty small price to pay for a cheaper upfront cost, though — in the past, Amazon forced lock screen ads onto its Prime Exclusive phones, which were a much bigger nuisance than a few removable apps. Luckily, those days are long gone.
Not their phone, not their problem.
You can get some pretty great phones through the Prime Exclusive program, like the modular Moto Z3 Play and the LG V35+, but even the best phones are susceptible to failure, whether in the form of software glitches or hardware malfunctions. Sometimes you just need to file a warranty exchange, and in the case of Amazon's Prime Exclusive range, that's not as straightforward as you might think.
While you can submit a return request through the Orders page of your Amazon account, warranty exchanges work a little differently. You won't find a separate button for filing a service ticket; instead, Amazon's Prime Exclusive FAQ instructs you to contact the phone's manufacturer directly for any kind of troubleshooting or warranty issues.
This isn't entirely unreasonable — Amazon can't repair a device it doesn't make, after all — but it's still inconvenient when compared to filing warranty exchanges through your carrier. Typically, your carrier handles the backend operations for you and even lets you hold onto your phone until the replacement arrives, at which point you can do an exchange directly in store with sales reps available to help move over your data.
Amazon's solution of sending you directly to the manufacturer with any issues is problematic because it leads to an inconsistent experience. Depending on who makes your phone, the process of filing a warranty exchange could be wildly different . Some manufacturers may let you hang onto your device while you await its replacement, while others will wait until they've received your defective unit before shipping a new one out — that process could potentially leave you without a working phone for weeks.
See LG V35 at Amazon Contact LG's customer support {.cta .shop .no-cart}
At the very least, it's good that Prime Exclusive phones come with a warranty at all. Because Amazon sells international and unlocked devices along with U.S. models, a lot of phones sell without a warranty at all.
Do you own a Prime Exclusive phone? Have you ever had to file a warranty exchange on it, and if so, what was your experience like? Let us know in the comments!
