Gaming laptop broken - less than 3 years old

unholyangel

Sandtree said:

The CRA gives you statutory rights not a warranty... unfortunately lax wording can add a lot of time and effort to the process. If you email the retailer about your warranty they will rightfully say you don't have one.

Some companies will simply ride roughshod over your rights so its not a magic bullet to quote your rights but you can't do much more than present your case accurately with your supporting evidence. If that doesn't get a favourable response then send a letter before action. If that doesn't solve it then Money Claim Online to go to the small track court. In practice most large companies will settle before the day in court. 

It does give a warranty, but it's the legal meaning of the word warranty (as in condition, warranty or innominate term) Of course, those who aren't legally trained/don't have legal knowledge don't know this distinction and think warranty refers to a manufacturers guarantee. 

unholyangel

OP, what exactly does the report state? How often did you service your laptop (clean out the build up of dust, check thermal paste etc)? 

Sandtree

unholyangel said:

Sandtree said:

The CRA gives you statutory rights not a warranty... unfortunately lax wording can add a lot of time and effort to the process. If you email the retailer about your warranty they will rightfully say you don't have one.

Some companies will simply ride roughshod over your rights so its not a magic bullet to quote your rights but you can't do much more than present your case accurately with your supporting evidence. If that doesn't get a favourable response then send a letter before action. If that doesn't solve it then Money Claim Online to go to the small track court. In practice most large companies will settle before the day in court. 

It does give a warranty, but it's the legal meaning of the word warranty (as in condition, warranty or innominate term) Of course, those who aren't legally trained/don't have legal knowledge don't know this distinction and think warranty refers to a manufacturers guarantee. 

Certainly don't consider manufacturer's guarantees as the limit of the scope of a warranty, warranties are promises/assurances in a contract with the obligor being liable for the breaches of those. Unfortunately been involved in many cases of effectively gaming warranties in contracts and long hours in lawyers offices negotiating the exact wordings... warranting that there are no known errors in data sets and immediately stop all data analysis to ensure no more errors become known. 

I am not convinced that statutory rights are warranties and never heard anyone referring to them as such before. Certainly no contract of sale I've seen from a high street retailer has any explicit warranties on durability etc. 

As you highlight though, I'm a business person with only a 101 training in law and have spent days of my life listening to £1,200 per hour partners arguing over if pseudonymised data counts as PII under GDPR or if NY or English law gives more protection to a reinsurer so can certainly appreciate that there are lawyers that would be more than happy to argue statutory rights do create a warranty

macman

Sandtree said:

macman said:

PS: if you paid with a credit card, then you can do an S75 claim up to 6 years later, but there's no chance your card provider will refund you in these circumstances.

In normal circumstances in theory there is the same prospects with the credit card as the merchant as the liabilities are identical however the OP stated that they paid with a credit card via PayPal which almost certainly means no S75 (unless they didn't log in to make the payment)

Thanks, you are quite correct, if Paypal was used as an intermediary then no chance of an S75, as there was no contract between the card provider and Lenovo.
My point, however, was that it's very rare for a provider to accept an S75 claim where goods or services have failed at some point after provision, because liability is so difficult to determine, even with expert evidence. It's much easier when goods or services are simply ordered and never delivered.

jackh123

Thanks all for your posts, however, I'm seeing some people implying that I'm trying to pull the wool over peoples eyes and not giving all information - @Manxman_in_exile - my wording may not have been the best by calling the 6 year CRA reference a warranty, I accept that, but again this isn't exactly my area of expertise.
I do have a report, again, didn't see a need to post this earlier, I am merely getting together some idea's. The report states as to why the laptop failed, by one of the MOSFETs burning through the motherboard.

I agree with @cx6, this is unusual to happen. With reference to the servicing of the laptop @unholyangel, the laptop insides were clean, it wasn't "serviced" per se, but was kept in a clean environment, though I would say it is highly unlikely that a dusting would have saved the chip to blow up.

unholyangel

Sandtree said:

unholyangel said:

Sandtree said:

The CRA gives you statutory rights not a warranty... unfortunately lax wording can add a lot of time and effort to the process. If you email the retailer about your warranty they will rightfully say you don't have one.

Some companies will simply ride roughshod over your rights so its not a magic bullet to quote your rights but you can't do much more than present your case accurately with your supporting evidence. If that doesn't get a favourable response then send a letter before action. If that doesn't solve it then Money Claim Online to go to the small track court. In practice most large companies will settle before the day in court. 

It does give a warranty, but it's the legal meaning of the word warranty (as in condition, warranty or innominate term) Of course, those who aren't legally trained/don't have legal knowledge don't know this distinction and think warranty refers to a manufacturers guarantee. 

Certainly don't consider manufacturer's guarantees as the limit of the scope of a warranty, warranties are promises/assurances in a contract with the obligor being liable for the breaches of those. Unfortunately been involved in many cases of effectively gaming warranties in contracts and long hours in lawyers offices negotiating the exact wordings... warranting that there are no known errors in data sets and immediately stop all data analysis to ensure no more errors become known. 

I am not convinced that statutory rights are warranties and never heard anyone referring to them as such before. Certainly no contract of sale I've seen from a high street retailer has any explicit warranties on durability etc. 

As you highlight though, I'm a business person with only a 101 training in law and have spent days of my life listening to £1,200 per hour partners arguing over if pseudonymised data counts as PII under GDPR or if NY or English law gives more protection to a reinsurer so can certainly appreciate that there are lawyers that would be more than happy to argue statutory rights do create a warranty

Its where the "secret eu 2 year warranty" misunderstanding comes from. 

But a warranty is a type of term in a contract (as are conditions and inmominate terms).  Statutory rights form part of the contract terms by default. 

I thought you said you dealt with contracts all the time for your job? 

Jenni_D

jackh123 said:

the laptop insides were clean, it wasn't "serviced" per se, but was kept in a clean environment, though I would say it is highly unlikely that a dusting would have saved the chip to blow up.

If the insides were choked with dust then this could form a thermal barrier over some of the components, preventing proper heat dissipation leading to the chip overheating. (Even in a "clean" environment dust still builds up inside a laptop). However I agree that it would have to be a huge build-up of dust to even have a chance of causing the issue you found, so on the balance of probabilities this was a chip which suffered early life failure thus would be classed as an "inherent" fault.

RogerBareford

jackh123 said:

Thanks all for your posts, however, I'm seeing some people implying that I'm trying to pull the wool over peoples eyes and not giving all information - @Manxman_in_exile - my wording may not have been the best by calling the 6 year CRA reference a warranty, I accept that, but again this isn't exactly my area of expertise.
I do have a report, again, didn't see a need to post this earlier, I am merely getting together some idea's. The report states as to why the laptop failed, by one of the MOSFETs burning through the motherboard.

I agree with @cx6, this is unusual to happen. With reference to the servicing of the laptop @unholyangel, the laptop insides were clean, it wasn't "serviced" per se, but was kept in a clean environment, though I would say it is highly unlikely that a dusting would have saved the chip to blow up.

But why wouldn't you spend 10 minutes doing some research online to understand your rights before starting the process of getting reports done. If you had done this then you would have known that the report needs to state it's and "inherent" fault and not just state that the fault exists so hopefully it does say that.

Sandtree

unholyangel said:

Sandtree said:

unholyangel said:

Sandtree said:

The CRA gives you statutory rights not a warranty... unfortunately lax wording can add a lot of time and effort to the process. If you email the retailer about your warranty they will rightfully say you don't have one.

Some companies will simply ride roughshod over your rights so its not a magic bullet to quote your rights but you can't do much more than present your case accurately with your supporting evidence. If that doesn't get a favourable response then send a letter before action. If that doesn't solve it then Money Claim Online to go to the small track court. In practice most large companies will settle before the day in court. 

It does give a warranty, but it's the legal meaning of the word warranty (as in condition, warranty or innominate term) Of course, those who aren't legally trained/don't have legal knowledge don't know this distinction and think warranty refers to a manufacturers guarantee. 

Certainly don't consider manufacturer's guarantees as the limit of the scope of a warranty, warranties are promises/assurances in a contract with the obligor being liable for the breaches of those. Unfortunately been involved in many cases of effectively gaming warranties in contracts and long hours in lawyers offices negotiating the exact wordings... warranting that there are no known errors in data sets and immediately stop all data analysis to ensure no more errors become known. 

I am not convinced that statutory rights are warranties and never heard anyone referring to them as such before. Certainly no contract of sale I've seen from a high street retailer has any explicit warranties on durability etc. 

As you highlight though, I'm a business person with only a 101 training in law and have spent days of my life listening to £1,200 per hour partners arguing over if pseudonymised data counts as PII under GDPR or if NY or English law gives more protection to a reinsurer so can certainly appreciate that there are lawyers that would be more than happy to argue statutory rights do create a warranty

Its where the "secret eu 2 year warranty" misunderstanding comes from. 

But a warranty is a type of term in a contract (as are conditions and inmominate terms).  Statutory rights form part of the contract terms by default. 

I thought you said you dealt with contracts all the time for your job? 

The 2 year EU warrant misunderstanding comes from the fact that the EU required nation states to implement laws giving a minimum of a 2 year warranty as a minimum but the UK didn't do so because SOGA at the time and subsequently CRA was considered to give greater protection than this minimum already. EU legislation in these types of areas are always minimum standards and states can choose to go further or approach it in a different way.

I deal with contracts a lot with my work but you'll find that insurers and reinsurers don't have many statutory rights when dealing with each other and especially when legal jurisdiction has been considered in relation to this.  

Jumblebumble

unholyangel said:

OP, what exactly does the report state? How often did you service your laptop (clean out the build up of dust, check thermal paste etc)? 

The big problem here is that Lenovo are adamant that if the case is opened up that will void any warranty.