Laptop won't connect to net, 4th time back to dell, can it be returned?

Dinah93

Hi all,

my OHs laptop is in a bit of a crisis. We bought it in January from Dell, it is a studio 1537. It has been back to dell for repairs four times in as many months always for different issues. Today it has stopped connecting to the net, not recognising a network all the other computers can see, none of the repair tools can work out the problem. Basically as it has been with Dell more than it has been with us and is utterly unreliable, can we demand a refund or a new laptop, as they keep 'fixing' one issue only for it to return and bringing a new one back with it!

Thanks, Dinah x

daily_2

Have you switched the wireless off?

4743hudsonj

Dinah93 wrote: »

Hi all,

my OHs laptop is in a bit of a crisis. We bought it in January from Dell, it is a studio 1537. It has been back to dell for repairs four times in as many months always for different issues. Today it has stopped connecting to the net, not recognising a network all the other computers can see, none of the repair tools can work out the problem. Basically as it has been with Dell more than it has been with us and is utterly unreliable, can we demand a refund or a new laptop, as they keep 'fixing' one issue only for it to return and bringing a new one back with it!

Thanks, Dinah x

i would think that under the sale of goods act (s14) you would be well entitled to a replacement by now as the repair route is becoming exhausted

just write to them quoting s14 of soga, paying attention to durability and state that repairs are no longer acceptable and you demand a replacement on a spec basis

give them 14 days to reply to the issue, if they do not reply or dont resolve the issue properly then you will contact trading standards and begin small claims court proceeding

although im sure dell will be happy to replace the product for you.

by the way you need to remove the thread from this board and put it on the consumer rights one

much more help for you issue there

Dinah93

No the wireless is definitely turned on, it just sees the network as 'unknown' for some reason, but all the settings are the same as on my laptop (also a dell but a studio 17" instead of the 15" and with an upgraded processor) and it just doesn't want to work.

Thanks, I will ask for the thread to be moved.

Fran

Hi,

Post moved as requested.

I was thinking though the network issue doesn't sound like a fault with the laptop, perhaps another post on Techie board would be useful?

DatabaseError

have you tried to connect to the unknown network? have you tried rebooting the router? maybe try setting a fixed ip on the laptop...
Wireless networking is not quite as resilient as wired networking...there are 1001 things that can go wrong...only one of which is "the laptop is broken"

Dinah93

Yep tried all of those unfortunately. It won't work even when connected to the router with a cable. The other 2 desktops and 5 laptops all connect just fine (a lot of people in our house atm!) so it very much seems to be a laptop issue rather than a router/internet/wireless issue.

LinasPilibaitisisbatman

Really unlikely to be the laptop

Had a very similar problem recently and it was down to the firewall blocking out the connection after a windows update

Have you tried turning off all the firewalls security etc?

scullster

I similarly had a problem like this though through wired - even replaced the router to no avail. Turned out to be Kaspersky being a little over protective and the system required a full software rebuild. Viruses et al can cause similar problems too.

Thats the trouble with PCs, you end up having to learn new skills and becoming a bit of a techie - there are a myriad of things it could be, all compounded by the fact that there are numerous hardware configurations (you've have umpteen different manufacturers components in the laptop) compounded further by different software manufacturers.

Given the nature of the fault - Dell will firstly tell you to switch off (temporarily) your internet security, try a different router (if wireless, even try the wired configuration), and then tell you to restore the laptop to factory settings. Then if it doesn't work, they'll look at it.