Samsung Decling Warranty on a Laptop with very small Dent on

ashok.198311

Hi, I Purchased a Samsung Laptop in september 2024 and it was working fine till 1 month back, all of a sudden it started randomly rebooting so I sent it to Samsung for repair under Warranty. The laptop has a Very Minor dent on the back of the lid and Samsung Repairs are saying that is the cause of the laptop random reboots and wants me to pay for a replacement screen about £320.

I sent for a repair and they came back with the invoice for me to pay for the screen, at that point I contated Samsung and MTR and told them I am not bothered about the touchscreen or the dent as long as the Laptop doesn't reboot automatically I am happy with that, so they agreed to fix the laptop and sent it back after the fix.

However immediately after receiving the laptop I had the same issue and when I sent it back this time they are saying they need to replace the screen otherwise the issue will not fix.

The dent is very minor and the screen is working, Samsung claims this is an accedental damange and they won't fix it. Where do I stand on this please any advise?

ashok.198311

Photo of the laptop

TadleyBaggie

Unless you purchased the laptop directly from Samsung, you have no consumer rights with them. Who did you purchase it from?

ashok.198311

TadleyBaggie said:

Unless you purchased the laptop directly from Samsung, you have no consumer rights with them. Who did you purchase it from?

direct samsung online store purchase.

born_again

To go any further. You are going to need a 3rd party report on the fault & that the damage is not the cause.
Given they have rejected the warranty, you are going to be looking under your consumer rights.

DullGreyGuy

ashok.198311 said:

Hi, I Purchased a Samsung Laptop in september 2024 and it was working fine till 1 month back, all of a sudden it started randomly rebooting so I sent it to Samsung for repair under Warranty. The laptop has a Very Minor dent on the back of the lid and Samsung Repairs are saying that is the cause of the laptop random reboots and wants me to pay for a replacement screen about £320.

I sent for a repair and they came back with the invoice for me to pay for the screen, at that point I contated Samsung and MTR and told them I am not bothered about the touchscreen or the dent as long as the Laptop doesn't reboot automatically I am happy with that, so they agreed to fix the laptop and sent it back after the fix.

However immediately after receiving the laptop I had the same issue and when I sent it back this time they are saying they need to replace the screen otherwise the issue will not fix.

The dent is very minor and the screen is working, Samsung claims this is an accedental damange and they won't fix it. Where do I stand on this please any advise?

A warranty is above and beyond your statutory rights and they can have whatever terms they want in them. They can exclude all warranty claims if there is accidental damage, they decision can be purely at their discretion etc. You'd need to read your warranty to see what the terms of yours are. 

Your statutory rights are with the retailer, they are defined in law and ultimately if there is a dispute then a judge decides which is the more likely version of events. As the item is over 6 months old it is up to you to substantiate that the problem is inherent with the device and not caused by you (eg the dent). Given their repair department have already reviewed it you're likely going to need and engineers report to challenge them that there is a defect with the device unrelated to the dent. If the engineer supports your case and you win you can add the cost to your claim, if it agrees that the dent has caused a short circuit or such and is the cause of the problem then its your cost to pay.

Aylesbury_Duck

It seems reasonable for Samsung to assume that being dropped or having something dropped on it has caused the rebooting problem and that replacing the screen will sort that out.  As advised above, the onus is on you to show that the problem is nothing to do with the dent.

TELLIT01

Although the dent may look minor it is quite a sharp indent which would have required a fairly strong impact.  That could easily have caused damage to internal components.

DullGreyGuy

Aylesbury_Duck said:

It seems reasonable for Samsung to assume that being dropped or having something dropped on it has caused the rebooting problem and that replacing the screen will sort that out.  As advised above, the onus is on you to show that the problem is nothing to do with the dent.

That depends on the terms of the warranty, given thats how the OP has approached it. 

Under statutory rights they should be doing more than simply assuming that it must be the cause of the problem rather than disassembling it and seeing that there is damage consistent with impact damage or the dent is causing a short etc. 

Jumblebumble

DullGreyGuy said:

Aylesbury_Duck said:

It seems reasonable for Samsung to assume that being dropped or having something dropped on it has caused the rebooting problem and that replacing the screen will sort that out.  As advised above, the onus is on you to show that the problem is nothing to do with the dent.

That depends on the terms of the warranty, given thats how the OP has approached it. 

Under statutory rights they should be doing more than simply assuming that it must be the cause of the problem rather than disassembling it and seeing that there is damage consistent with impact damage or the dent is causing a short etc. 

Could I ask who you think should pay Samsung for their engineering time/costs for disassembly/reassembly  and diagnosis.
In any case I don't see that it helps the OP much  if Samsung were to mark their own homework?
I say this on the basis that the Samsung engineer is probably more incentivised to mandate a screen replacement as this will considerably reduce the risk that they still don't fix an intermittent  problem and that the customer moans that the engineer did not do their job correctly


I also see a bit of a discrepancy between this post and your post at 0836.

DullGreyGuy

Jumblebumble said:

DullGreyGuy said:

Aylesbury_Duck said:

It seems reasonable for Samsung to assume that being dropped or having something dropped on it has caused the rebooting problem and that replacing the screen will sort that out.  As advised above, the onus is on you to show that the problem is nothing to do with the dent.

That depends on the terms of the warranty, given thats how the OP has approached it. 

Under statutory rights they should be doing more than simply assuming that it must be the cause of the problem rather than disassembling it and seeing that there is damage consistent with impact damage or the dent is causing a short etc. 

Could I ask who you think should pay Samsung for their engineering time/costs for disassembly/reassembly  and diagnosis.
In any case I don't see that it helps the OP much  if Samsung were to mark their own homework?
I say this on the basis that the Samsung engineer is probably more incentivised to mandate a screen replacement as this will considerably reduce the risk that they still don't fix an intermittent  problem and that the customer moans that the engineer did not do their job correctly


I also see a bit of a discrepancy between this post and your post at 0836.

Welcome to the joys of being in business, if you're customer bought the item from you less than 6 months ago its assumed its faulty unless you can prove otherwise. If you do prove it broke because it was dropped or they spilt coke over it etc then yes you can reject the claim is faulty but you still have to carry the cost of the inspection etc. It's one of the reasons why products in the UK/EU are more expensive than in the US where you have little consumer protection. Costs are ultimately paid for by customer through higher retail prices.

Most specialist retailers or manufacturer/retailers will have their own inspection people as it tends to be cheaper to have them look at it on a PAYE basis and have a cost on cases you reject than have the customer commission a report which you then have to refund on upheld cases as the delta in a salary -v- one off report is vast. In Motor insurance an in-house engineer gets circa £45k and take under an hr per report, external engineers charge £150 per report. You'd have to have a very low uphold rate for it to be cheaper to let customers do the reports.

Ultimately if you have Samsung's engineer saying one thing and the OP's engineer saying another it would be for the judge to decide which one they believe. The OP's engineer equally will have been paid by "their side" and therefore could be motivated to produce a report that is in favour of their client. 

If you ever get an "expert witness" to produce a report for you in a case much bigger than a faulty laptop there will be a section in the report covering off on what basis their opinion should be considered "independent" despite being paid for by one of the parties. With some professions, though not electrical engineers, its slightly easier because their professional body requires them to be honest and independent (eg principle 1 and 3 of the institute of actuaries)