Faulty refurbished laptop, bought in November, my rights?

LittleMissBride

Hello fellow money savers

Looking for advice. My hubbie purchased a refurbished Dell laptop from a local independent computer retailer that has a good reputation, this was in November 2010. It comes with a 6 month-warranty.
Last month I went to plug my laptop in to charge, there was an almighty bang and my charger blew up! I took the laptop back and they replaced the charger and at the time the technician made a fleeting comment that the battery 'won't be as good now'. I'm 'fick' and didn't question it at the time.

I can no longer use my latop unless it is plugged into the mains, which kind of defeats the reason I needed to purchase the laptop. My husband went into the retailer and they said the battery is not covered by the warranty and they stated 'we gave you a good deal on it anyway'.

I can't help feeling short-changed, what are our rights here?

Thanking you in advance, Kerry xxx

CoolHotCold

LittleMissBride wrote: »

Hello fellow money savers

Looking for advice. My hubbie purchased a refurbished Dell laptop from a local independent computer retailer that has a good reputation, this was in November 2010. It comes with a 6 month-warranty.
Last month I went to plug my laptop in to charge, there was an almighty bang and my charger blew up! I took the laptop back and they replaced the charger and at the time the technician made a fleeting comment that the battery 'won't be as good now'. I'm 'fick' and didn't question it at the time.

I can no longer use my latop unless it is plugged into the mains, which kind of defeats the reason I needed to purchase the laptop. My husband went into the retailer and they said the battery is not covered by the warranty and they stated 'we gave you a good deal on it anyway'.

I can't help feeling short-changed, what are our rights here?

Thanking you in advance, Kerry xxx

Most of the time Laptop batteries are classified as consumables and fall (depending on manufacture) within 3 months to 12 months.

loztiggy

Try contacting dell direct, I had a dell laptop and the battery was rubbish after about 8 months, Pc World wouldnt cover it and told me to ring dell, who were incredibly helpful. They dispatched a brand new battery which was bigger than the original and held hours of charge. All for free. It arrived the next day!

CoolHotCold

loztiggy wrote: »

Try contacting dell direct, I had a dell laptop and the battery was rubbish after about 8 months, Pc World wouldnt cover it and told me to ring dell, who were incredibly helpful. They dispatched a brand new battery which was bigger than the original and held hours of charge. All for free. It arrived the next day!

Dells battery warranty is 12 months. If you go to the dell support website.http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/en/details?c=uk&cs=ukdhs1&l=en&s=dhs
You can enter in the service tag (on the bottom of the laptop or in BIOS) and it will tell you how long the warranty is left. If its got days left then phone them, if not then still stuck with the original problem.

And loztiggy, for just about every manufacture PcWorld buy out the warranty to make it cheaper but not Dells. If Dells go faulty and you phone PcWorld they will tell you to phone Dell, if you insist on the retailer doing it you'll take it into PcWorld and they just do exactly the same process but it takes longer (has to be booked onto their system then phoned up). Its not PcWorld refused to do anything with it, just with Dell its infinitely easier and faster to go direct with Dell.

LittleMissBride

Wow thank you guys for your help. Turns out the laptop is out of warranty with Dell by over a year Such a shame, looks like I'll have to cough up for a new battery