Samsung Decling Warranty on a Laptop with very small Dent on

Jumblebumble

DullGreyGuy said:

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) 

To be fair I do agree with the content of the above response  latest post although of course insisting  the customer pay for an inspection on any claim  over 6 months must discourage a good many chancers so its swings and roundabouts.
I do run a business but we are exclusively B to B and of course no sensible business will thank us if we choose a cheaper way of resolving an issue that does not work
I will also say that we deal with many many ignorant  third party "experts" who tell our customers nonsense

For example would you trust this company who have made no attempt to correct  this statement
"Instead, customers can only order spare parts through Miele, but the range on the Miele website is much smaller than what spare parts shops were offering until recently."
https://www.repaircafe.org/en/curious-step-miele-makes-repairing-more-difficult/
 The truth is here it is just an incompetent third party making up fairy stories
https://www4.miele.de/msd/MSD#/device/30261/dashboard

Alderbank

Jumblebumble said:

DullGreyGuy said:

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) 

To be fair I do agree with the content of the above response  latest post although of course insisting  the customer pay for an inspection on any claim  over 6 months must discourage a good many chancers so its swings and roundabouts.

There is no such requirement for any 'customer inspection'.

A basic tenet of all civil law however is that the claimant must produce evidence to support his claim on the balance of probability.

The Consumer Right Act leans in favour of the consumer claimant rather than discouraging them, in that for the first 6 months the burden of proof is reversed.

In many cases, the defect is obvious. If you order a glass vase and it arrives shattered, a photograph is enough. If you order your new car in blue and it arrives in red, no expert is required. If the defendant has conceded the goods do not conform to contract but is disputing the remedy, evidence of nonconformance is not required.

But if the defendant claims that the goods did in fact conform to contract at the point of sale more than 6 months ago and he produces some evidence such as a report from his engineer or the manufacturer, the claimant needs evidence to support his own claim. @DullGreyGuy and others are recounting their experience that paying for an independent report is an effective way to achieve that in court.

Few expenses are allowed in small claims court but expert witness fees up to quite a generous amount are one of the exceptions; the successful claimant does not have to pay for the inspection, he recovers the cost from the defendant.

DullGreyGuy

Jumblebumble said:

DullGreyGuy said:

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) 

To be fair I do agree with the content of the above response  latest post although of course insisting  the customer pay for an inspection on any claim  over 6 months must discourage a good many chancers so its swings and roundabouts.
I do run a business but we are exclusively B to B and of course no sensible business will thank us if we choose a cheaper way of resolving an issue that does not work
I will also say that we deal with many many ignorant  third party "experts" who tell our customers nonsense

For example would you trust this company who have made no attempt to correct  this statement
"Instead, customers can only order spare parts through Miele, but the range on the Miele website is much smaller than what spare parts shops were offering until recently."
https://www.repaircafe.org/en/curious-step-miele-makes-repairing-more-difficult/
 The truth is here it is just an incompetent third party making up fairy stories
https://www4.miele.de/msd/MSD#/device/30261/dashboard

It may discourage some time wasters but with the cost of a report potentially being 10x that of doing it yourself it has to be a very significant proportion of time wasters. It also won't help you if the report states it will cost £500 to repair when you were intending to offer them £300 as a settlement. Not only has the report cost gone up but so have the damages. 

Customers are feckled things, thankfully dont have to deal with them very often these days. Have two customers presenting the same problem they are often very different views on how things should be resolved. Some will want the cheap repair and accept it may not look pretty or last forever and others will want the no expense spared full fat repair. Half the time you do what they have asked and then they come back later saying why did you tell them that there was a cheaper option available or that after 10 years the repair has failed. 

There are a lot who claim to be experts who arent, there are plenty who claim to have spoken to experts who haven't. Again in my trade any expert report will come with another section on their qualifications and experience to justify their competence to complete the report. 

As to Miele's report? No idea what a "webshop" can get from them, I know personally there are big differences between the regional websites but when the .co.uk site has said parts arent availabe/dont exist their telephone team have been fine at getting them for me - though arguably some were more "accessories"