Out of warranty but within servicable life span

ispartacus75

I have an Acer Aspire 3003 WLMI laptop. It was manufactureed 11/05, it was bought by us some time after that (reciept and box are in the loft somewhere) but it was more than 12 months ago so the 1 year warranty has expired.

My laptop has 2 major, non-replaceable parts, faults on it.

1) The socket on the laptop that the power lead goes into is faulty. Sometimes it will make a connection, sometimes it wont and needs to be forced in again to get supply. This can happen multiple times on a day.

2) The unit seems to be badly overheating, even when on a normal table. The PC will then close every program without warning and shut down (unlikely to be a virus as Im running NOD32 with up to date definitions, and the underside of the laptop is too hot to touch at the time it shuts down).

Now I know that technically as the product is out of warranty any repair costs would be mine, however we paid something like £500 for this so I would expect it to last more than 18 months-2 years.

I read somewhere, maybe here, a while ago how it was possible to argue about the expected lifespan of a product outside of its warranty period to get the repairs done free of charge by the manufacturer, does anyone know of anything or have any advice?

If the problem was a battery issue or power adapter issue I would probably pay for that myself as they can be bought off the internet from a variety of places, however these are internal components at fault (power socket, fan system?) and would not be readily available or replaceable without some serious opening up of the laptop. If this were a 7 or 8 year old laptop I probably wouldnt be so bothered but around 2 years lifespan for a laptop is a little too much to swallow.

I certainly wont be buying an Acer next time though.

Any comments or advice welcomed and appreciated.

superscaper

Nothing to do with the manufacturer. It's the retailer that's responsible for faulty products. Go to them. (Sale of Goods Act)

ormus

nearly all laptops have had similar problems over the last few yrs not just acer.
battery overheating is a well known problem. sony had a huge problem with it. cost them millions.
power lead connection socket is another well known prob. dells also have the same problem.
not surprising really as there are very few lappy makers worldwide. a lot of lappys are just rebranded items.
components even more so.

wakandem

Some acers are sold with 2 year warranty - worth checking.

fwor

superscaper wrote: »

Nothing to do with the manufacturer. It's the retailer that's responsible for faulty products. Go to them. (Sale of Goods Act)

I'm not sure that's right, superscaper. I thought that the retailer only had to take responsibility within the warranty period, and that after that you had to argue the case with the manufacturer.

Whichever, I've always had least success with the retailer.

I've had some very good results by going direct - good ones in my experience: Sony, Olympus, Garmin.

Bad one: Sharp (never again! Sorry, starting to rant again).

superscaper

fwor wrote: »

I'm not sure that's right, superscaper. I thought that the retailer only had to take responsibility within the warranty period, and that after that you had to argue the case with the manufacturer.

Whichever, I've always had least success with the retailer.

I've had some very good results by going direct - good ones in my experience: Sony, Olympus, Garmin.

Bad one: Sharp (never again! Sorry, starting to rant again).

Sale of Goods Act has nothing to do with manufacturers. It is the retailers' responsibility. The warranty is actually in addition to consumer rights and is usually with the manufacturer so you've got it the wrong way around. See Martin's article on consumer rights.
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/consumer-rights-refunds-exchan

fwor

superscaper wrote: »

Sale of Goods Act has nothing to do with manufacturers. It is the retailers' responsibility. The warranty is actually in addition to consumer rights and is usually with the manufacturer so you've got it the wrong way around. See Martin's article on consumer rights.
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/consumer-rights-refunds-exchan

I ~thought~ the bit about "expected lifespan" was something to do with EU legislation and not the Sale of Goods Act, but it's at least a year since I last looked into it, so I may be remembering it wrong.

Whichever, ~actual experience~ of standing in a shop (Dixons) trying to convince them about "expected lifespan" was not a good one (yes, I did start out politely...).

And actual experience of going directly the maker has been generally good - possibly because there you are not (typically) dealing with some spotty youth who knows bu66erall...

KeithP

You are right in some respects, fwor.

Your typical shop sales-person appears not to know that the seller is responsible for selling a product that will last a reasonable time.
Now, maybe the seller has an arrangement with the manufacturer that means the manufacturer will carry out repairs on behalf of the seller, but in law the seller is responsible.
Maybe (usually) the manufacturer offers a one year warranty. This is in addition to your consumer rights.

gooner045

you are in a contract with the retailer who you bought the laptop off, not the manufactuer. All goods should be expected to last a reasonable amount of time, i.e 6yrs in england, 5 in scotland. Write immeddiately to the head office explaining the problem and that you intend to claim under the sale of goods act 1979. It is now down to you to prove it is a manufacturing fault i.e through a pc engineer, keep all reciepts and that can be added to a claim in the county court. meanwhile google all known issues with regard to your laptop and see if it is an inherent problem. If you google the consumer council they have all the template letters.
hth

gooner045

http://www.consumerdirect.gov.uk/after_you_buy/making-complaint/template-letters/faulty-goods/

superscaper

gooner045 wrote: »

All goods should be expected to last a reasonable amount of time, i.e 6yrs in england, 5 in scotland.

A bit misleading. The law is that goods are expected to last a reasonable time up to 6 years (5 years in Scotland). That's not the same as saying they should last 6 years. Basically it is to cover all types of products and different things will have different expectations. In actual cases, laptops can reasonably be expected to last 3/4 years. Something like a kettle would be less than that, a large plasma TV longer than that. And 6 years is simply the maximum in the range.