Apple Mac and John Lewis

Nilrem

A high capacity drive has little or no bearing on how much usage you'd expect to give it, it's just how much storage capacity you might need (which has little relationship to how long you expect it to last).
For example you can go out and buy a 250gb hard drive, which will have the same mean time between failure, and reliability as a 1000gb one (same series, same manufacturer), all that is really changing is how much space you have available.
Basically the drive doesn't have to work any harder (in fact in some cases it can be much easier on the drive if you've got a lot of spare space), because it's higher capacity.

The only thing that might have a bearing is if it was a server rated drive, or consumer and that is unlikely to have a bearing on the case (unless the op was running the drive 24/7), but that isn't applicable as we're talking laptop not desktop drives.


What does spring to mind, is that many laptop hard drives have a lower warranty than the desktop equivalents, because they are exposed to more stress, and are more compact, so SOGA might not actually come in very handy, as the laptop itself was not beyond repair, but one part that could be realistically be expected to fail earlier than the rest of it has.

Basically, I don't think the op is in a great position with regards to SOGA and the laptop hard drive, but if he wants to give it a go, he might get lucky.

sparklegrrrl

The SoGA for durability will work. Apple's hard drives (the one's I've checked have been Samsung) are very durable and arguably the most critical part of a computer. I know in my computers I'd want everything to fail before the hard drive. I've got some 10 year old Macs still running and they've been great.

Also bear in mind that when you put in a claim that a lot of hard drive manufacturers have warranties for 5 to 10 years. So JL/Apple may get a refund/free hard drive behind the scenes depending on the arrangement with the hard drive co. Look at a few of the big manufacturers Samsung, Hitatchi, Seagate and look at their hard drive warranties.

Apple expects each machine to last for around five/six years - they show this through software updates. And when they release new software they make sure it works on a machine that's around five/six years old. So a Mac should last longer than 2 years.

superkeen2save

Just to clarify a couple of points that got muddled along the way with this thread;

The rogue machine in question was an eMac which is a desktop model (not a laptop)
It was only subject to moderate domestic use in my home
The hard drive was 80gb (I think) - John Lewis repairer informed me this was a larger capacity disk. I assume they meant higher than previous models as according to replies here this is pretty small!

Having spoken several times to a very helpful chap they're unshakable in their 'it's out of guarantee' stance. I tried several of the approaches suggested by MSE'ers but to no avail.

I guess we'll just hold on to the machine and one day save up to get it repaired (more cheaply, elsewhere) and hope it's not totally obsolete by then.

I remain happy with the Apple Macbook Laptop but hacked off that we had to splash out on it at all.

Good luck to anyone else with similar problems though.

:sad:

Jakg

The smallest HDD's you can buy nowadays are 160GB for about £30 - if you wanted to.

Recovering the data etc would cost a lot, but simply bunging the new drive in and re-installing the OS would take a few hours max - def. not £400 worth!

vyle

taxiphil wrote: »

Superkeen, I would definitely take the same action that I've suggested to the OP on the other Apple thread:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1091677

(except in your case the contract is with JL not Apple)

Despite JL's supposedly wonderful reputation for customer service, they are serial "SoGA deniers" just like Comet and Currys and all staff including managers are trained to repeat the mantra of "it's not under warranty so we can't help you". Which is of course utter nonsense but they know the majority of people will be fobbed off by it, and it conditions people into thinking they need to buy extended warranties, which are hugely profitable for them.

I've had a very similar experience with JL myself and I found the only way of getting them to recognise their liability under the SoGA was by issuing a county court claim. They promptly settled in full, out of court.

You can fire off a claim cheaply and easily at www.moneyclaim.gov.uk

But send a letter before action first, as I suggested on the other thread, as the court expects you to do this before issuing a claim.

The issue about you buying another computer from them isn't relevant so just don't mention it to them.

Jl staff don't get trained 'that mantra' at all. I have seen colleagues who ventured over the guarantee date-line by a couple of weeks before and they were given a severe telling off, though.

the reason? If it's out of warranty, then the store gets charged the full bill for the repair, and a lot of the time, customers decide they want a new one anyway, or an exchange, and there would be no way of recovering costs, not even behind the scenes.

Nilrem

May I jsut add re hard drive warranties.

I've never seen one with a ten year warranty in 12 years of building my own machines, and most only recently moved up to 5 years after years of varying between 2 and 3 years (depending on manufacturer and model).
Also most hard drives sold to the likes of Apple and Dell are sold in batches as true "OEM" (as opposed to retail bare drives sometimes called OEM), and the system builder (apple) will normally get a discount on the drives with the understanding they will only get one year warranty.
IIRC Seagates site for example will tell you the warranty length on their drives if you enter the serial number, and will note if the drive is from a batch sold to the likes of apple and explain it's got a 1 year warranty via the system builder.

I would also add that in terms of expected life, the hard drive is normally one of the first things to go wrong in any reasonably well built machine (about the only things that go wrong more often are fans and optical drives in my experience), as they are mechanical and mechanical goes wrong a lot more frequently than solid state.

Apple and the like may expect the machines to last 5+ years, but that will usually be with a fair number of them requiring maintenance to keep them running - things like fans, and drives have bearings that will wear out for example.

Having said that I would expect a hard drive to last on average 3-5 years (depending on model - newer ones should be slightly more reliable), but never rely on them lasting at all - anything of any importance should be backed up to other media (DVDR/Flash/Additional drives) on a regular basis - i've had batches of drives go wrong in short order (including 4 samsung drives of the same model go wrong within 6 months of each other).

BellyDuJour

Is it possible to contact an independent Apple Authorised repairer as they may be more lenient, rather than go through John Lewis?

The reason I say this is because I bought a laptop from John Lewis which lasted six weeks before the hard drive developed a fault. After running the system restore disks etc, I spoke to John Lewis technical support who suggested various things (all of which I'd already tried) and then told me to return the laptop to the store as it seemed like I had a faulty hard drive.

John Lewis said they'd have to send the laptop off for repairs as that was company policy and that it'd take up to 28 days to repair and return to me. :eek:
The advisor didn't seem interested in what fault was occuring on the laptop - she said she wasn't at all technical so would just send it to Toshiba. Later that evening, I get a phone call from her saying that she'd fixed it and can I come and collect it in the morning. !!!!!!? I knew they hadn't fixed it as it wasn't a software fault, and I wasn't entirely happy with someone who confessed to knowing nothing about computers tinkering with my laptop! Well, she hadn't fixed it and had somehow managed to create another partition on the hard disk.

Anyhow, the evening that I dropped the laptop off at John Lewis, I went onto Toshiba's website to look into their warranty T&C's and found out that they had an approved repair centre a short drive away. I dropped the laptop off yesterday lunchtime, they fitted the hard drive under warranty and I collected it this afternoon - a BIG improvement on 28 days!! Using the laptop now and it seems fine!

oilit

Re swopping out components and send back new in warranty mc

I think that is fraud.

And when the mc goes back to factory at least one of two things will happen. One may invalidate warranty by opening the mc. two, the serial numbers of the drive and other components will not tie up with the mc case serial number. So I woudl expect them to send it back to you with a bill for labour - I work in the IT industry and thsi is what my company woudl do.

Blacksheep1979

vyle wrote: »

Jl staff don't get trained 'that mantra' at all. I have seen colleagues who ventured over the guarantee date-line by a couple of weeks before and they were given a severe telling off, though.

the reason? If it's out of warranty, then the store gets charged the full bill for the repair, and a lot of the time, customers decide they want a new one anyway, or an exchange, and there would be no way of recovering costs, not even behind the scenes.

erm didums - it's the shops legal responsibility, regardless of any warranty/guarantee, to repair or replace defective goods for up to six years. If the shop ends up out of pocket then they should maybe consider stocking more robust products that do last - although I hardly think that the £50 or so to replace the hd of a computer is going to outweigh the profit from that sale...

vyle

Blacksheep1979 wrote: »

erm didums - it's the shops legal responsibility, regardless of any warranty/guarantee, to repair or replace defective goods for up to six years. If the shop ends up out of pocket then they should maybe consider stocking more robust products that do last - although I hardly think that the £50 or so to replace the hd of a computer is going to outweigh the profit from that sale...

If Apple (the authorised repairer - after 28 days, any faulty items go straight to the manufacturer for repair) are quoting £400 to fix it, then that's what it'll cost. It's not a case of popping to ebuyer, buying a £50 hard drive and popping it into the computer.

It needs to go to a qualified engineer if it's going to be fixed, and in store there aren't the resources to set up a suitable workshop to have an in-house engineer.


Furthermore, as the hard drive came IN the computer, rather than as a stand alone product, it won't usually be covered by the 3 to 5 year warranty you get on individually purchased hard drives.

If you've got a problem and the item is out of warranty, I'd advise shopping around with engineers to see if one can do it cheaper, or take it up with apple directly.

As for the sale of goods act, unless it can be proven that the hard drive was faulty at purchase, rather than damaged through impact or some other means, OP probably won't get too far.