Faulty Dell after four weeks - compensation

mostly

dear lord, what a hard time you've had. I'm sure injury lawyers 4 you will be able to assist you.
Get a grip of yourself

rcssmb

Now I am really shocked. I thought I was at the home of consumer power. You people take banks to court for charging £20 when you go overdrawn even though its in your contract with the bank. Somehow because it doesn’t cost the bank £20 that’s ok. Let me enlighten you - the computer I paid £500 for didn’t cost Dell £500 (and definitely not £60 to have it delivered - I know it comes all the way from Ireland)

Perhaps you don’t treasure spending time with your family, value your days off work (to take deliveries?) just want to get what you paid for? I do and am proud to do so. To 'assist' Dell in their attempt to fix the problem lost me 8 hours of my life - the bits I enjoy the most in the evening when I should be with my family. To take delivery of the replacement I will have to be at home - no school holidays in the near future so guess I waste 1 of my 25 annual days holiday. Then when I get the replacement I have to set it up. OK four users, email accounts, parental controls, documents, videos, photos, favourites etc. Take me about 4 hours if I was doing it with two monitors, keyboards, mice...

Dell are in breach of contract, everyone can see that. I am not blaming them (component failure happens) but they are responsible. mostly you are right I am legally entitled to damages but it would be difficult to quantify and I may just get an award for nominal damages - I am not talking about damages but compensation; recognition of the fact that their failure has caused an adverse affect on my life. Perhaps I need to set up a timesaving website..

To regain some respect from this forum, I bought it through quidco on my credit card earning me 5% and 3% cashback respectively.

So much for consumer power: lets just roll over and be happy that eventually 8 weeks late I might get what I paid for.


Damages
Damages are intended to compensate the innocent party for the loss that he has suffered as a result of the breach of contract. In order to establish an entitlement to substantial damages for breach of contract the injured party must establish that:

- actual loss has been caused by the breach; and
- the type of loss is recognised as giving an entitlement to compensation; and
- the loss is not too remote; and
- the quantification of damages to the required level of proof.

A breach of contract can be established even if there is no actual loss. In that case there will only be an entitlement to nominal damages.

rcssmb

slicksurf wrote: »

Make sure you wipe your drive properly like using proper free space deletion programs like these http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Best/disk-erase-free.html

Right back on topic again :beer:

Thanks for the advice but there are only two ways to ensure that my data is safe

1. Degauss and shred the hard drive using an ISO/IEC 27001 compliant organisation (its what we do at work with disks with sensitive data on)
2. Keep it and hope I don't get robbed!

Legally I don't own the disk on the but since a 250gb sata II drive retails at £36 (ebuyer) it must only cost Dell £20 tops. Not much of a sorry gesture?

Thanks

rcssmb

weegie.geek wrote: »

One mouse, keyboard and screen is all you need.

Thanks, I was sure that they had blocked direct connection with crossover cable in Vista but can't find reference. So long as I dont have to get an Easy transfer cable! Those things are nasty

isofa

Nothing will shred your data 100% safely, forensic hard drive rigs will be able to recover data to some degree, even if it's been shredded using government pass wipe techniques, there will always be small variations in the magnetic surface, to the edge to where data has been written, we are talking nano-metres, but it's possible with the right equipment to recover at least some, if not all of the data on a HD platter surface.

Even drives that have suffered fire and water damaged have shown to give up significant data in forensic recovery, used in court cases.

This has been well demonstrated and documented in various cases, do a Google.

Nothing is 100% safe Just a cheery thought for a Friday

Back to the topic, they are giving you a new replacement machine, OK it's an inconvenience, but no company can say a product will be 100% error free, so if they are replacing it, what's the problem? Am I'm being cynical, or do I live in the real world, they are a massive company, and you are a very small customer, they've probably made less than £100 out of you, but are at least solving your problem.
You'll waste your time chasing for "damages", cut your losses and enjoy your new machine when it arrives.

Life is too short, Dell are not ripping you off or treating you badly - I've experienced much worse customer service from other companies.

rcssmb

isofa wrote: »

Life is too short, Dell are not ripping you off or treating you badly - I've experienced much worse customer service from other companies.

Not totally true, tried to rip me off by orignally offering me £15 saying that the wireless card didnt work with Vista (despite having updated Vista drivers on their website)! It was only when I said I would have a refund under the sale of goods act that I am getting a replacement.

Guess its more of a disappointment because I trusted Dell. At work we spend £2.5m per year (of hard earned public money) with them. They treat us very nicely thank you but not one lonely consumer. Against my ethics but perhaps I should just speak to our work account manager .....

Reggie_Rebel

Wilkinson sell a claw hammer for £1.25.

That will sort your data recovery problems out

albertross_2

Read the contract, where in it does it guarantee there won't be a fault in the 1st 12 months? This is the techie forum, not the compensation culture forum, if people were entitled to compensation for such things, lawyers would get rich, every consumer good would cost more, and our taxes would go up.

What is the fault, what is the card?

superscaper

The SOGA only covers you in terms of the product or service itself and it's repair/replacement value. Not for perceived losses. That's a completely separate issue. They haven't breached anything. They haven't point blank refused to do anything about the fault have they? If you really think you're going to get some kind of compensation you're being unrealistic. At best you'll get some kind of meagre goodwill gesture (such as the flash drive) and that's a bonus if anything. I'm usually (as some posters know) the first to jump to SOGA but that's got nothing to do with compensation, it's simply a fair expectation of products and services and making sure you're back to where you started, if things go wrong, as quickly as possible, i.e. same working product/service or money to the value of that product/service. It's not about "how much can we get the company pay?".

rcssmb

albertross wrote: »

....our taxes would go up.

What is the fault, what is the card?

No guarantee things wont go wrong, just laws to protect us if they do.

Not sure why taxes would go up? Cost of goods would possibly go up. Alternatively manufacturers would see that an increasing cost to them was compensation and work hard to reduce that cost by making things better! Admitted this wont ever be 100% but wouldnt everyone be better off?

Thought I was in a consumer arena (Money Saving Expert: Consumer Revenge)? admittedly in the techie sub section perhaps you are lost and need to go to the pcpro forum?