6 week old laptop broken!

pendulum

Ok. If they were "able" to tell you it was the CPU over the phone, then they were simply guessing. This guess turned out to be wrong as it was the motherboard which was replaced. The person on the phone won't be a repairer, they are just working from a script, nor will they have a perfectly up to date or detailed information about each item in for repair. Just because they say it's waiting for a new hard drive does not mean that is so. It's called "improvising an explanation"

scheming_gypsy

nah you're right, it's not worth giving them chance to pull their face. All you can really do is hope it comes back pretty quick

texranger

scheming_gypsy wrote: »

Although if the CPU failed I can't see why they need a new hard drive especially if you've been able to get the data off the drive

some places it seems to be standard practice to also replace the HDD.

I know Dell do this, which even their outsoruced engineers think its daft. my DVD drive of my Dell broke, so Dell sent their engineer out with a new DVD drive, HDD and OS disc.

the engineer refitted the new DVD drive tested this and then gave me the OS disc and then asked if i wanted him to fit the HDD, i said no as the one on the computer is OK, so he just gave tme the HDD in its box as he could not return this and he mark on job sheet given to customer not fitted.

scheming_gypsy

Now you mention it they do seem to have 'none returnable drive' on a lot of laptop hard drives.

Maybe they like to replace the drive so they can see if people have any interesting pictures stashed away? About 18 years ago when i did end user PC stuff, we had somebody bring their machine in for repair and he'd been looking at kiddie smut and grannies with dogs.

visidigi

Wheeler01 wrote: »

Hi Pendulum

In reply to your post that was what knowhow told me had happened when I called their technical support! They said as the laptop would not even come up with the HP logo or go into the BIOS (not sure that is correct) then the CPU had failed and although it was being sent for "repair" is was highly likely that this couldnt be done.

Im no computer expert and therefore no I did not know what was wrong with it just going by what I have been told, which is the motherboard has been replaced and a new hard drive has been ordered 2 totally different faults!

Don't worry if you're not a computer expert, neither are they!

shocking support from 'nohope'

hard drive replacement seems common in home user support, they don't tend to do it on corporate machine contracts (the machines are usually identically spec'd) where as home users may have machines built from different suppliers. Home users tend to have a lot of random software compared to corporate machines, therefore the support groups find it resolves more problems first time if restoring the machine back to factory settings (and I bet they replaced less HDD's when the price recently rocketed as well...)

visidigi

scheming_gypsy wrote: »

Now you mention it they do seem to have 'none returnable drive' on a lot of laptop hard drives.

Maybe they like to replace the drive so they can see if people have any interesting pictures stashed away? About 18 years ago when i did end user PC stuff, we had somebody bring their machine in for repair and he'd been looking at kiddie smut and grannies with dogs.

None returnable drive is because OEM drives go with the device warranty, not the Retail warranty. e.g. If I buy a Western Digital drive in retail packaging I get a 5 year drive warranty - if I buy a dell laptop with a 12 month warranty, despite the same drive being in it I am not covered by the 5 yr WD warranty, just the Dell 12 month one...

texranger

this is also a global shortage of HDDs at the moment due to the weather in Thailand were most HDD are manufactured

JoshP

pendulum wrote: »

Ok. If they were "able" to tell you it was the CPU over the phone, then they were simply guessing. This guess turned out to be wrong as it was the motherboard which was replaced. The person on the phone won't be a repairer, they are just working from a script, nor will they have a perfectly up to date or detailed information about each item in for repair. Just because they say it's waiting for a new hard drive does not mean that is so. It's called "improvising an explanation"

When I worked for TTG/PCW a few years ago there was no script and the workshops were linked to the callcentre system so chances are they could be replacing both parts. They do seem to overkill on the new parts though sometimes I was left bewildered why they didnt just replace the whole machine and save on engineer time. In terms of the OP getting a replacement you need to deal with Customer Services HArdware would never authorise a replacement....

Wheeler01

I know what your saying its just really disappointing that it went wrong after a little under 6 weeks! It wasnt the cheapest of laptops either so I would have thought a replacement would have been offered in the first instance as they can go back to the manufacturer to claim the cost of this which is a lot less than I paid for it.
As you said it seems mad to get an engineer working on something when the cost of the replacement would have been a cheaper option for them. I will be happy when I have it back.

CoolHotCold

The way the call centre and the workshop works is call centre can see exactly where it is in the system, who's working, what bench and what parts are tagged.

What a Engineer will do is diagnose the fault (such as no POST) and tag the parts the system might need (Such as Mainboard, CPU), so instead of just ordering a single part and hoping that'll fix it he/she will order all the parts it might be and when they arrive from the storage depo (same physical location but in a different building), they'll swap out the components till the system is fixed (or use some technical equipment to figure out what should sort it).

So yea, the call centre can see what's tagged to be replace, but until it's actually carried out it's a educated guess.


Wheeler, as far as replacing it goes, there has to be a cut off point somewhere, and no Dixons Retail can't claim the costs back from the supplier after a certain amount of days have gone past, and as they supply the aftersales warranty (as in aside from Dell/Samsung&some Acers, any repairs cost them money that they can't claim back from the manufacture (but they do get the laptops cheaper for this)).

To replace your laptop it would cost them the repair costs (as they still have to repair it) and a discount to sell on as refurbished, this is why from a business point they can't do it.

Bad luck, but sometimes these things happen with complex computers.