So many people have dashcams in their car, and I’m no exception. I have a Nextbase model but, recently, it’s been randomly restarting during journeys. After discussion with the AI support bot (I had no choice – don’t judge me!), it turned out that the internal battery was pretty much dead – after fully charging, the dashcam should stay on for around 8 minutes without a power supply. Mine shut down as soon as it had started up.
So, a new battery it is.
But, although Nextbase have made it easy for you to get into the dashcam (possibly for their own advantages), they’ve made it frustratingly difficult for the average person to then make the battery replacement themselves.
It’s a pretty standard flat, rectangular battery too – the type you’ll recognise from the back of old Nokias, or similar mobile phones of the past. You can get a replacement battery for around £8. Except, instead of a simple connector, they’ve decided to wire it into place – specifically wires that are soldered onto the board.
So, although standard screws will get you in, you then need to be handy with a soldering iron to do the replacement. They could make it, like those mobile phone in the past, so it touches some pins, or just (as the replacement batteries often come with) have a connector on it.
Why soldered?
I can only think of one reason – to make it so that most people will need to return it to them for the battery to be replaced. That includes me. I have a solder iron. I have used that solder iron. I am still terrible with it.
Anyway, after discussion with the AI chatbot, they eventually passed my request onto a real person. It took a few days for anyone to reply back to me, all via email, and each reply after this took 2 more days as well, usually. So conversation with slow – you’d hope they’d tell you everything you needed.
Well, after getting details they sent me all the RMA details to return the dashcam to them for the battery to be replaced. All the details except for the price. I had to ask, and wait 2 days, to find out it was going to be £35. That’s quite a mark-up on an £8 battery. I sent it and, 2 days later, they confirmed they had it and engineers would start working on.
I didn’t get another response for 8 days. That’s how long it took them to inspect it – during this time I have no working dashcam in my car. And this is just to look at it, not to make repairs. This was their reply…
Your device has been inspected by a service engineer and a fault has been confirmed.
The unit requires a new LCD panel and battery pack.
The total cost for us to repair the camera and ship the item back to you is £65.00.
Wait, what? The LCD panel worked fine but had started delaminating slightly in one corner. It had been like that for quite some time and it still worked absolutely fine. I’m now paying £30 more for a repair I didn’t ask for and not sure if I need.
The email finished with details on how to pay. Nothing about how to argue with their assessment or how to have it returned without a repair. “It’s more than we said it would be, pay up”.
And after 1.5 weeks without a dashcam, and knowing that each reply would be adding 2 more days to the wait, I just paid it. And guess what happened next? 5 days later – 5 days – they confirmed payment and would now look to repair it. They repaired it and despatched it back to me the same day, thankfully.
It’s been working just fine since but, end-to-end, I was without my dashcam for around 3 weeks.
None of this, though, was necessary. Replacing those wired connectors on the battery with a simple connection system, like pretty much all other devices use, would mean that people could do this at home. For much less cost and same day. Of course, that doesn’t make Nextbase extra money – especially when they can find fault with other parts at the same time.
Right-to-repair laws can’t come soon enough in the UK and I hope they extend to more than just phones and laptops. This is a good example of where only legislation will force manufacturers to do the right thing.
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