Three Customer Support

Under a month after buying an HTC One from Three it developed a fault, a physical fault. According to Citizen's Advice and the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982 it is Three's responsibility to supply me with a handset of satisfactory quality and that will last a reasonable amount of time. However Three were not interested, repeating again and again that physical damage is not covered under warranty, that the damage must have been caused by my own carelessness (without even examining the handset) and that in any case HTC is responsible for the warranty. They've told me that theirs is "standard worldwide practice", ie, English law somehow doesn't apply? They've ignored, and seem to have no knowledge of the letters I'd sent (by registered post), and one of their shop assistants actually advised me to commit fraud by taking out insurance after the fact and then claiming on it, saying that going down the legal route (ie, asserting my legal/consumer rights) would just be "a headache for everyone involved".

UPDATE: I took Three to court (quite easy to do online) and won by default when they continued to ignore the situation. They only paid up (the full price of the phone) when I threatened to send in the bailiffs.