Am I being taken for a ride?

Wynnester

Hi, I really need a bit of advice on a repair of a 2.5 year old Sony Viao laptop. When it failed to start up I took it to a local repair shop who said it looked like it needed windows reloading which they did for £30. A few months later it wouldn't start again and said it was the graphics card. I told them not to do any work but they replaced the card anyway (an nvidea geforce 8600 which is apparently a rubbish chip and caused no end of problems) and charged me £120 labour which I paid under duress. A few weeks later I tried to go onto google earth only to find that the drivers for the graphics chip had never been loaded..so obviously the repair guy didn't test it worked after he did the repair. Back it went and when they loaded the drivers on the new chip wouldn't work either. The repair man ended up sending the laptop to sony to get the chip repaired for free. So by this time I'm £150 out of pocket for what ended up being a free sony repair. 2 weeks after I got the laptop back this time it started freezing and periodically saying operating system not found. In the course of these repairs the operating system was reloaded at least 3 times so I took it back to the repair firm who now say it'll need a new hard drive at £60ish and it's just a coincidence that it happened almost immediately after they had it for repair. HELP! I know nothing about computers and don't know if I should be challenging them or just hand over even more money.

JJ_Egan

repair shop who said it looked like it needed windows reloading which they did for £30

Logical

A few months later it wouldn't start again and said it was the graphics card. I told them not to do any work but they replaced the card anyway (an nvidea geforce 8600 which is apparently a rubbish chip and caused no end of problems) and charged me £120 labour which I paid under duress.

Could be the card but £120 labour a lot and you paid or labour and parts OK price .

The repair man ended up sending the laptop to sony to get the chip repaired for free.

That sound like it was not the graphics card as a replacement would have not been a Sony part . Sounds to me like it was a onboard graphics chip rather than a seperate graphics card . so that smells a bit in regard to the earlier supposed card replacement .

few weeks later I tried to go onto google earth only to find that the drivers for the graphics chip had never been loaded.

Windows would have updated the driver highly unlikely to run under VGA set up without you being aware ..

I got the laptop back this time it started freezing and periodically saying operating system not found. In the course of these repairs the operating system was reloaded at least 3 times so I took it back to the repair firm who now say it'll need a new hard drive at £60ish and it's just a coincidence that it happened almost immediately after they had it for repair.

Probably true although a failing hard drive could have been the initial problem and or a failing graphics card /chip or both .

jje

aliEnRIK

Personally id cut my losses and get a new laptop

Wynnester

Sorry, I've used the words chip and card when I mean chip. And the £120 was just labour as they just took a chip out of an old dead laptop they already had. I thought it was a lot just to solder something onto the motherboard...

Wynnester

aliEnRIK wrote: »

Personally id cut my losses and get a new laptop

Would do but it's an £850 laptop thats only two and a half years old so I'm reluctant to write it off..........

busenbust

Wynnester wrote: »

Would do but it's an £850 laptop thats only two and a half years old so I'm reluctant to write it off..........

How much in total has been spent?

Is the laptop now fully working as when new ??

JasX

you can get a perfectly good bog standard dell type laptop for £350, it'll be alot faster and more powerful than your 2 year old thing that were it in good condition now wouldn;t be worth that much.... you have spent £150 and are about to drop another £60 on it that 'might' fix its latest problem....

Wynnester

busenbust wrote: »

How much in total has been spent?

Is the laptop now fully working as when new ??

£150 so far with an extra £60 to be spent if I agree the work..... Hopefully it would come back to me as new.

jayme1

not that you would have known but the nvidea geforce 8600 was subject to a massive recall from all manufacturers and even a class action lawsuit.

I say that you wouldnt have known (why should you if you don't read/not interested in tech news) but I would bet my bottom dollar, so to say, that ANY person who works in the computer repair will have known, meaning that if he knew then he was on some level he was scamming you

http://gizmodo.com/5023963/inquirer-every-nvidia-graphics-card-with-g84-or-g86-chipset-is-ready-to-die

bigblackdog

JasX wrote: »

you can get a perfectly good bog standard dell type laptop for £350, it'll be alot faster and more powerful than your 2 year old thing that were it in good condition now wouldn;t be worth that much.... you have spent £150 and are about to drop another £60 on it that 'might' fix its latest problem....

dell as good as sony ? are you on drugs or something

JasX

bigblackdog wrote: »

dell as good as sony ? are you on drugs or something

Depends if you think its good to pay twice as much for a similarly specced machine just because it has a sony badge and shinier case.

I'd suggest any current spec laptop you buy today, even a £350 dell, will markedly outperform any brand of 2.5 year old laptop in the <£900 price bracket.

why would you thrash out fixing a near obsolete machine on grounds it was expensive when you bought it? technology moves on.

I regard most laptops as disposable after 3-4 years max, they tend to get relegated to elderly relatives who barely know how to email each other.