laptop warranty

davemc

Guys and Galls.....a friend is in the process of purchasing a new laptop......and the most important thing to him is the warranty issue...now I know that Dell have come in for the fair share of abuse here at Boards but the fact is that they do offer a fairly comprehensive number of warranty options....other manufacturers offer a lot more bang for your buck but if for example something went wrong with the machine, will most manufacturers send someone out to the house..i.e. onsite warranty??.(Dell do..)..to try and rectify the problem or will they just say "fine...we'll pick it up tomorrow and send it back when fixed"....I saw a nice Toshiba but only a one year warranty and the salesman claimed that a technician would attempt to fix onsite any problems within the warranty period......anyone have any experience of really good warranty service......another friend had an Advent which was disasterous but thankfully he took out extra cover but they never suggested sending someone out instead they sent a courier company in to collect each time......any advice is greatly appreciated....

BoB_BoT

the likelyhood is that your tech support will first start off with a phone call that will take you 20mins to get through, a further 30+ mins for the guy on the end of the phone to get you to try out whatever he can think of before even considering sending someone out or having it recalled for repairs. it might be worth getting it from a store, my main reason being is that you have somewhere to bring it back to if it does feck up, especially if it's his first lappy/comp. if all else fails, just bring it back and say this piece of crap doesn't work, i want my money back.

uzami

I have a fujitsu-siemens laptop and it came with a one year on-site repair and additional two year off-site repair.

After about 10 months I had a problem with the port that the power adaptor plugged into....they sent an engineer out within a few working days to replace the motherboard....there was then a few issues with the dvd drive....they sent an engineer out with a new dvd drive.....this didn't solve the problem...so they sent him out again with a new motherboard which unfortunately was doa.....so I phoned tech support saying that the problem has now escalated and I feared that they would never be able to fix the laptop......so they sent me out a brand new laptop (upgraded).

I was very impressed throughout all this by the quality of the service

spongebob

Originally posted by davemc
but the fact is that they do offer a fairly comprehensive number of warranty options....other manufacturers offer a lot more bang for your buck but if for example something went wrong with the machine, will most manufacturers send someone out to the house..i.e. onsite warranty??.(Dell do..)..

You are correct.

Dell are the only ones who will FIX it onsite. They are also the only ones who offer a complete accident (coffee or drops) onsite policy as well.

I advised some schools to go with that. The net result was that 25% of the cost of the machine is actually warranty, EG 1400 becomes 1850 or something. The good news is that they have 3 years of this cover. I always advise people that a laptop should last at least 3 years but that the spares cost an arm and a leg after a year and a half.

Batteries last 15 months, if you buy a spare now it will cost €50-80. In a year and a half that battery will cost €120-150 . 2 dead bateries during the lifetime of the warranty will get you 60% of your extended warranty back.

Dell back to base warranties are good but cumbersome.

1. The phone call, some of these go to India which is awfully tedious, they refuse to depart from their scripts over there. Lets say this is done Monday and a service call is raised.

2. DHL box arrives Tuesday , box it up and call DHL again to collect it, say weds.

3. Thursday it arrives in Dell in Birmingham, they turn it around quick , out the door again thursday.

4. Friday you get it back in working order.

So back to base is 4 full working days normally. Onsite complete is 1 working day.

If you are getting a Tosh from PC-World you will find that back to base is acttuall try to fix and then bring it back to the shop and hang around for spare parts. It is a crap warranty because the tech will never have the spares with him, no matter if you say 'the screen is dead' he will never have a screen. HP warranties are no better. IBM turn them around from Dublin pretty fast in my experience.

M

jesus_thats_gre

In previous experiences, you may want to double check that the battery is covered by the warranty, some only cover it for one year, regardless of the duration of the warranty.

Shamo

Originally posted by Muck
Dell back to base warranties are good but cumbersome.

1. The phone call, some of these go to India which is awfully tedious, they refuse to depart from their scripts over there. Lets say this is done Monday and a service call is raised.

2. DHL box arrives Tuesday , box it up and call DHL again to collect it, say weds.

3. Thursday it arrives in Dell in Birmingham, they turn it around quick , out the door again thursday.

4. Friday you get it back in working order.

So back to base is 4 full working days normally. Onsite complete is 1 working day.

M

I had to get a service done on my dell laptop.

Maybe they did that before but now they send the service call and the courier brings the dell box down with him the next working day.
They sent the service call on saterday, monday it was collected and it's in Birmingham today.

Paddyo

With any portable or desktop, no matter what the brand - you should always ask what company carries out warranty repairs.

In more cases than not, warranty repairs are sub conracted to a third party.

Find out who the third party is and then get as much info on them as you can.

Paddyo