Faulty laptop - responsibility for data?

ChrisRS2 · 17 April 2017 at 6:48PM

My 6 month old laptop recently developed a fault where I would not switch on. This Acer laptop was purchased from Argos so I contacted their support line which was actually straight to Acer. They asked me to send the laptop to them for repair but told me to back up the data. They advised me to go to a local specialist to get it backed up as I couldn't turn it on. I did this but this cost me £35 for the back up and £69 for an external hard drive.
The laptop was quickly repaired (needed new mother board) and now have it back. However Argos have advised they have no responsibility for the cost of the back up. Is his correct? Why should I bear the cost of this on a faulty product in guarantee?
Any help appreciated.

John_Gray · 17 April 2017 at 6:58PM

Could you just not have told Argos that the daily image backup*, which you always make, would keep your data safe?

I would say that their advice was extremely sensible - think how 'pleased' you would have been if the repair had involved a reformat or replacement of the laptop's hard disk, and you had no backup...

* for example, to an external USB hard drive, using a program such as Macrium Reflect Free - this is usually scheduled to run automatically.

PS I hope the local specialist provided you with further advice about how you could keep your data more safely?

Mista_C · 17 April 2017 at 6:59PM

Data is your responsibility and any good tech/engineer will tell you if your data is important to you then it should be backed up regularly anyway, not simply when a fault occurs.

The whole point of backups is so you don't lose data when a fault occurs.

Frozen_up_north · 17 April 2017 at 8:24PM

Any computer is a fault waiting to happen. It is entirely the user who is responsible for backing up their data.

Often the quick fix for a computer software fault is to reinstate the hard disk partition to the original state, resulting in the loss of all user installed programs and data. You then have to remove any junk (a/v, games, Microsoft Office demos, etc), then install a huge amount of updates.

I use Acronis True Image, http://www.acronis.com which at least means you can install the system as it existed on any particular date when you ran a backup. It was especially useful when installing the Windows 7 to 10 free updates, when several weeks later it fouled up, making switching back and forth to/from Win 7/10 very quick and easy.

DavidP24 · 17 April 2017 at 9:26PM

ChrisRS2 wrote: »

My 6 month old laptop recently developed a fault where I would not switch on. This Acer laptop was purchased from Argos so I contacted their support line which was actually straight to Acer. They asked me to send the laptop to them for repair but told me to back up the data. They advised me to go to a local specialist to get it backed up as I couldn't turn it on. I did this but this cost me £35 for the back up and £69 for an external hard drive.

The laptop was quickly repaired (needed new mother board) and now have it back. However Argos have advised they have no responsibility for the cost of the back up. Is his correct? Why should I bear the cost of this on a faulty product in guarantee?
Any help appreciated.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but it WAS your responsibility to back up your data, it was not really necessary to pay what you did, you could have simply removed the hard disk. They could then return/replace the machine with one without disk.

It would have cost you £2.42 to buy a USB sata cable adapter which would have allowed you to copy the data yourself.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/371786648174

Anyway, you still have the external disk which is an asset.

The reason I mention this is that IF you did have a case for consequential loss you would still have a duty to mitigate the loss.

I would have backed up the data or removed the drive for reasons of confidentiality, I would have gone to Argos and told them that my contract is with them, I would take the machine to the local store and no more. If they want to send it to Acer then so be it.

They have repaired the unit and you now know the value of educating yourself, there are videos like this one that will tell you how to remove it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lf7C34MaMLs

It really could have been a lot worse.

System · 17 April 2017 at 11:10PM

ChrisRS2 wrote: »

However Argos have advised they have no responsibility for the cost of the back up. Is his correct? Why should I bear the cost of this on a faulty product in guarantee?
Any help appreciated.

Yes it is correct. Any PC repair shop worth its salt has

"WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR LOSS OF DATA ON YOUR COMPUTER" in big bold red letters a foot high in several places in the store because data loss can and does happen when doing repairs and the quantities some users have and the time it takes to go back everything up makes it not economically viable to do and still keep your repair cost at a reasonable level.

Data backup is your responsibility and you should be doing it anyway regardless. All you need is a memory stick or an external USB hard drive and periodically copy your files to it. Hell you don't even need to do that if its not a massive amount as you can get free online storage from Google Drive, Microsoft Onedrive and Dropbox to name three.

Backing up your data should be considered a routine task. If I had a quid for everytime the answer was "no I don't have a backup" when I'd been given a computer to repair and I'd been told the customers childs photos were on the laptop and were irreplaceable I'd be a millionaire.

If the stuff on your laptop is important to you then back it up.

ChrisRS2 · 18 April 2017 at 8:27AM

Thanks for all your responses. FYI we do regularly back up the important stuff to USB but my daughter had recently been using it for important GCSE work which had not been backed up. It was for that reason also we had to quickly get the back up from the local repair shop and get the laptop repaired, rather than find the cheapest way to back it up, although I'd be concerned fishing around in a nearly new laptop under warranty to remove the hard drive!
In any case I get the drift of the messages that it's my responsibility although it galls me that we had to spend money due to a fault of the manufacturer. At least I have a spare hard drive now!

debitcardmayhem · 18 April 2017 at 8:36AM

You ought to be using some cloud backups for your daughter too, so if the PC faults she can access her work via a tablet/phone/friend pc etc

were · 18 April 2017 at 1:11PM

ChrisRS2 wrote: »

FYI we do regularly back up the important stuff to USB but my daughter had recently been using it for important GCSE work which had not been backed up. ..... At least I have a spare hard drive now!

You often need to back up more than 'the important stuff', usually everything is good as you will end up missing bits like license keys, web favourites and passwords etc. Also a backup of the operating system is good too.

However backups are futile if you can't restore it, or it fails to restore, and you need to be proficient at both, and do them regularly. Multiple copies to different source is a good thing too. Take care of the bootable usb/cd that it asks you to make, as it is hard to make another when things do not work.
to backup https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQA7NlLvxg8
to restore https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuyD2Wm4y9Q
software http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

zagubov · 19 April 2017 at 12:57AM

There's a stack of other online cloud storage services you can use for free. Adrive and MEGA give you 50Gb free and pcloud and box about 10-20Gb each IIRC. Plus obvs dropbox and googledrive and such like.

forgotmyname · 19 April 2017 at 5:46PM

I got my daughter 2 USB devices (different brands) and told her to ALWAYS save stuff to the PC and to both USB sticks. With 3 copies the risk of losing the data was very very slim.

She couldnt backup to the cloud at college, so the USB option worked best for her.

You didnt need to spend £69 on a hard drive though. The person that backed up your data could have backed upto your cloud or created a cloud account for you and just used a cheap USB stick.

Where did you store your backups?

Faulty laptop - responsibility for data?

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