Unfortunate experience with dbrand Grip Case for Pixel 6
I bought a Grip Case for my Pixel 6 to replace an older case that was falling apart. I was worried that it wouldn't be able to proper protect my phone anymore from the occasional drop.
Seeing as the Pixel 6 is an older phone, I didn't have many options that would be protective but still look decent. My options basically boiled down to a generic $10 case from Amazon or either a Pela case or dbrand case for around $60.
I decided to go with the Grip Case and the teardown skin. Part of the reason was that I remember my first ever online purchase being a dbrand skin for my first phone, a Nexus 4, all the way back in 2013. I hadn't kept up much with dbrand since then, but judging from all the ads and YouTube sponsorships over the years I assumed they were making a killing with their new products. I remember being quite happy with the old skin I bought, so why not go with these guys again? Supporting a local Toronto business also seemed like a good idea.
I ordered the new case on April 22nd and it arrived and was installed on April 24th. Just as I mentioned in my e-mail to customer support, the case seemed unusually stiff and took more force than usual to install, but I didn't think this was necessarily a bad thing at the time due to my older case feeling too flimsy and literally falling apart.
Later that day I noticed that the screen was developing a green tint from the top right corner where the buttons were located and where the case was hardest to install. While that sucked, I didn't think much of it at the time as the phone was over 3 years old at this point and I thought maybe the OLED screen was starting to fail. I was already thinking of going through the Google Store and scheduling a battery replacement due to poor battery life, so adding a screen replacement on top of that seemed logical. Again, it still sucked, but the phone was aging and it made sense.
One thing that raised my suspicions was when I looked at my phone flat on a table under bright overhead lights, I noticed distortions in the reflections near the right edge of the screen where the buttons are located. This seemed unusual but I didn't know what to make of it in that moment.
This all took a turn for the worse when on May 6th I decided to try removing the case to inspect the screen. I would have had to remove the case either way when it was time to bring the phone in for repairs, so I might as well do it beforehand. Again the case felt very stiff and difficult to budge, but I just followed the official dbrand installation video again to make sure I was installing/uninstalling the case properly. I removed the case corner by corner, leaving the top right corner for last. Just as I pushed off that corner of the case, the screen cracked right where the case was applying pressure on the top right corner where the distortions had formed.
That's when I realized that all of these symptoms were connected. The distortions & non-uniform reflections, the sudden development of a green tint in the display, and the crack that formed in the same spot. It all started in the same small span of time since I installed the case. I've never experienced this phenomenon with another case or another phone. None of my friends had experience anything similar either, but after explaining the symptoms and showing them the photos, they all concluded that it had to be the case.
It seems ironic, a $60 case that I chose for protecting my phone over a $10 case ended up being the cause of the damage and ultimately resulted in a ~$200 repair bill.
I've already e-mailed dbrand customer support regarding this but their response left a lot to be desired. They did mention that the "fit seemed outside of normal parameters" but then went on to explain how their cases "underwent a series of rigorous fit and drop tests in order to achieve the impact protection certifications that they have" and that "We manufacture our cases to fit (without a skin beneath) within very close tolerances to the device itself". In terms of amends, they offered to send out a "care package" of 3 free skin kits for any supported device.
I just don't understand how free dbrand skins is supposed to help me out here. For all I know, if I had gone with a generic cheap case off Amazon my phone would most likely still be doing alright. Or even if I'd decided to keep using my broken case, same thing. If I had bought a cheap knockoff case and something like this happened, or the case didn't protect against a drop, I would only have myself to blame for cheaping out and not having any recourse, but I chose against that. I bought an expensive, widely-advertised case instead and somehow I'm still stuck in the worst case (no pun intended) scenario.
I've included photos of the damage and two screenshots of the e-mail correspondence so far. In the second e-mail the tone seems to have shifted from the case being "outside of normal parameters" to "there may have been any number of factors that could have contributed to this situation" and "this is not a common experience or anything we've seen with other customers".
Has anyone else had an experience like this in the past? What sort of recourse do I have left?
TL;DR: expensive dbrand case cracked my screen, dbrand is offering free skins as amends, I still have to foot an expensive repair bill. Can't use the same case again even if I get my phone repaired 🙃.