Should I be entitled to a replacement iPhone?

Hi

I signed up to a 24 month mobile plan with Virgin Mobile (Australia) through a company called AllPhones. I left the AllPhones store minutes before it closing on Saturday night. Once I got home and started to try out the new iPhone I realised that it could not make or receive calls properly.

Every time it was on a call, the screen would freeze and flash on and off (about once per second). I could not hang up or use any of the other controls on the screen. It seemed locked. I tested it several times both making and receiving calls. Every time the call was activated the same thing happened and disabled the phone. The only way out of a call was to hit the sleep/power button.

Everything else seemed to work as expected.

I took the phone back to AllPhones on Sunday morning after being told by an employee over the phone that they would replace it that day because it was within 24hrs of purchase.

When I got there another employee told me straight up that the phone would need to be sent away for assessment which would take 21 days! The other employee took about an hour of squirming to tell me the same thing, even though he assured me they'd replace it there and then.

I was told that if the phone was damaged the employee would need to foot the bill to replace it (if they had given me a new replacement).

I am extremely unhappy. I am now paying for a phone that I don't have and only had in my possession for a few hours. If you bought an electrical item and took it home to find it didn't work, you'd take it straight back in and get a replacement, no questions.

What is worse is that the shop assistants at AllPhones would not even guarantee that I would get a NEW replacement phone. I was told it could well be a refurbished phone. I can not believe that I might be paying top dollar for a second hand iPhone!

I can understand why AllPhones don't want to risk sending a phone back to Apple to have it returned as damagaged and if I had owned the phone for a bit longer, I would think it normal. But with this current system, I have just signed up to a contract to effectively fix one of Apple's broken iPhones!

Why on earth do I have to pay for the faulty device, both by way of having to now wait for a replacement, paying a contract or eventually ending up with a refurbished model.

Does anyone from Apple have any advice for me? AllPhones blame Virgin and Virgin blames AllPhones and the AllPhones blame Apple. Meanwhile, I have no phone!!

Thanks for listening to the rant...

Compare my story with this one:

http://getsatisfaction.com/apple/topi...

Someone please help!