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Have you experienced problems with your BlackBerry’s trackball? I wouldn’t be surprised if you did. The trackball mechanism is composed of a number of small parts, and that leaves plenty of room for things to go wrong. In the past we’ve gone over how to clean your trackball and, if it comes down to it, how to replace your trackball. Thankfully, new models now feature the trackpad, which figures to have fewer problems because it doesn’t have moving parts. But for those of us with trackball devices, we can certainly run into issues. Thankfully, T-Mobile gets this — at least in some small way. They’re offering in-store replacement for certain BlackBerry trackballs.

If you have a Pearl 8100 or 8120, or a Curve 8320, and you purchased the handset from T-Mobile, you can bring it to a retail outlet and they’ll pop in a new one for free. This covers most T-Mobile BlackBerry models with a trackball, though it does leave out the 8820. A replacement trackball should tide you over until you’re eligible for an upgrade, at which time you can treat yourself to a brand new Berry, complete with trackpad.

I think it wold behoove other carriers to offer a similar deal. This goes especially for Verizon and Sprint, which carry the BlackBerry Tour. I don’t know if it’s the different housing on the Tour, but the trackball just doesn’t work the same. Both carriers faced complaints over the summer about faulty trackballs, though they both pronounced the problem behind them. That’s pretty convenient, though I don’t buy it. I’ve had a Tour for a little over two months now, and I can already feel the trackball slipping at points. I’m certain I’ll have to visit a Verizon store in the near future and talk them into replacing it.

Soon enough, this shouldn’t be a problem. Instead, we’ll be dealing with the issues the trackpads eventually present — they’re not perfect, after all. But, for now, it seems like a trackball replacement program would be cheap enough for carriers and nice enough to customers.

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