Gaming laptop broken - less than 3 years old

Sandtree

Jumblebumble said:

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.

Opening the case cannot breach your statutory rights though 

Manxman_in_exile

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. 

...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

Good.  It's helpful to know what experience your opinions are based on.

Sandtree

Manxman_in_exile 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. 

...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

Good.  It's helpful to know what experience your opinions are based on.

Didn't realise my insurance background was unknown? 

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

RogerBareford said:

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.

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

The "report" merely needs to assist the consumer in articulating that on the balance of probabilities the goods do not conform to the contract. 

Manxman_in_exile

Sandtree said:

Manxman_in_exile 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. 

...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

Good.  It's helpful to know what experience your opinions are based on.

Didn't realise my insurance background was unknown? 

Noooo!

I mean being locked in a conference room for days of your life with lawyers on £12 zillion per hour!

unholyangel

Sandtree said:

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.  

Lol no it wasn't. 

The EU regulations on consumer rights say the period for enforcing those rights has to be at least 2 years (legal warranty). 

But England already provides 6 years for simple breach of contract in the statute of limitations (limitations act) and scotland prescribes 5 from discovery for the same under prescription (scotland) Act. 

Absolutely nothing at all to do with SOGA or CRA. 

They may not have much on statutory rights, but if you deal with contracts on any basis other than superficial, then you should have an understanding of what a warranty is, because those exist in every contract. 

unholyangel

Jumblebumble said:

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.

Uhm isn't the laptop 3 years old? Most manufacturers only offer 1-2 years how long was yours and why aren't they dealing with it under guarantee if its still covered?

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

unholyangel said:

Sandtree said:

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.  

Lol no it wasn't. 

The EU regulations on consumer rights say the period for enforcing those rights has to be at least 2 years (legal warranty). 

But England already provides 6 years for simple breach of contract in the statute of limitations (limitations act) and scotland prescribes 5 from discovery for the same under prescription (scotland) Act. 

Absolutely nothing at all to do with SOGA or CRA. 

They may not have much on statutory rights, but if you deal with contracts on any basis other than superficial, then you should have an understanding of what a warranty is, because those exist in every contract. 

I think a main part of the issue is that the EU uses the word guarantee which is often translated into warranty when being discussed, this then becomes confused between enforcing rights regarding a lack of conformity and additional warranties. 

RogerBareford

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

RogerBareford said:

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.

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

The "report" merely needs to assist the consumer in articulating that on the balance of probabilities the goods do not conform to the contract. 

Well the contract was to supply a device which functions without defects or faults. If the report simply states a component has failed after three years of use then that certainly doesn't mean it was in any part due to a fault during the manufacturing. The OP could have taped up all the vents and used it on top of a radiator for three years. So that's why the report needs to state that the component failed due to no fault of the OP and it must have been due to the component being sub standard during manufacture (i.e. an inherent fault).

So if your saying it doesn't need to specifically say the fault is "inherent" then yes your right but it needs to say the fault was likely to be there when purchased which is what inherent means so they might aswell use that terminology in the report so there is no doubt by anyone who needs to review it.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

RogerBareford said:

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

RogerBareford said:

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.

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

The "report" merely needs to assist the consumer in articulating that on the balance of probabilities the goods do not conform to the contract. 

Well the contract was to supply a device which functions without defects or faults. If the report simply states a component has failed after three years of use then that certainly doesn't mean it was in any part due to a fault during the manufacturing. The OP could have taped up all the vents and used it on top of a radiator for three years. So that's why the report needs to state that the component failed due to no fault of the OP and it must have been due to the component being sub standard during manufacture (i.e. an inherent fault).

So if your saying it doesn't need to specifically say the fault is "inherent" then yes your right but it needs to say the fault was likely to be there when purchased which is what inherent means so they might aswell use that terminology in the report so there is no doubt by anyone who needs to review it.

No I'm not saying this (although I don't like the term inherent).

I am saying that it is possible to articulate a conclusion which is not stated from others which either are or aren't. 

If an independent inspection doesn't note any water damage a conclusion may be articulated that the goods were not water damaged, as if they were it would have been mentioned.  

Equally if an independent inspection concludes an sealed internal component, with which the user has had no negative interaction, has failed then a conclusion may be articulated that the component failed due to a lack of durability rather than being left on top of a radiator as had this occurred there would be signs of misuse detailed in the report.

For the consumer the risk of small claims is very little as the costs are small, however the process is likely to be daunting.

For the trader the process is probably not daunting and they know typically that it is for the consumer, however the costs are likely to be disproportionate from their perspective.

There is no harm whatsoever in approaching the trader with the best you are able to achieve in the hope they will accept it, should you wish to file through small claims then it would be wise to ensure what you have has appropriate substance but on the balance of probability rather than beyond all reasonable doubt.