Mate wants to exchange faulty laptop

Chinafoot

Right the story is, a mate of mine in college bought a brand new packard-bell laptop from a well-known computer store about 2 months ago.

About a week ago the power cable wouldn't work so she brought it back to the shop where she was told that they would have to take the whole laptop and send it off for 6 weeks to Belgium. As my friend is in her final year and does most of her work at home, being without it for 6 weeks really isnt an option. After much arguing with the manager he agreed to give her a new cable.

On saturday night she was finishing up an essay for college and all of a sudden the laptop crashed and her work was lost (error on her part for not backing up but anyway) and no amount of searching could retrieve any of the essay.
This wasnt the first time in the past two months that her laptop had done this and in general it was very slow working.

Yesterday, herself and her father brought it back to the store with the receipt and the warranty and basically told them that it was faulty and she wanted to exchange it. She was told by the manager that they would take the laptop for up tp 28 days to test it and see if they can fix it (without providing a replacement) and then they would give her back the same laptop if they were successful otherwise a replacement of the same model.

Basically, my friend doesnt want this laptop. She's had nothing but trouble with it. Theres a Toshiba in the same store around the same price that she expressed an interest in but the manager told her she couldnt get an exchange despite having the receipt, warranty and obvious problems with the machine.

Now I was always of the understanding that if goods you bought were faulty and you had the receipt you were entitled to a full refund or an exchange. This manager is insisting otherwise.

Any opinions on this?

kiazoe

The store will need to test the laptop to check whether it is a hardware fault or software fault. Software is not included under warranty.

If it is a software issue then you should use your provided recovery procedure (may be discs but i believe packard bell have a program in windows for it now)

If it is hardware, because it's been 2 months the store are unlikely to fix the laptop or replace it for your friend. They will refer you to the manufacturer as their warranty covers repairs and replacement, and probably send the laptop to packard bell to allow this to happen.

I doubt you have a chance of getting a different laptop replaced unless you argue strongly about the fact the laptop was gone for 6 weeks and you originally returned it within 2 weeks because of the power cable fault (i'm assuming this is how things happened from your post).

Let us know how it goes!

miju

in fairness it sounds like it is more a software rather than a hardware fault which isn't covered under most computer warranties and the period of time set out in law is for length of time that is considered reasonable service 28 days or less AFAIK, so this is gonna be an uphill struggle by the sounds of it

Fenster

A lot of problems with laptops basically boil down to the owner not knowing some of the "tricks" of Windows XP, such as say msconfig. A lot of complaints about slowness would be from 30+ programs and 15+ services launching at startup. This can also lead to a good bit of instability, in fairness.

Other people wouldn't know what a virus was if it walked up and bit them on the arse, so they don't have, or have but don't use, anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall software, leaving their machine open to everything and anything on the net.

IMHO, you'd be better served in this case by giving it to someone who knows their way around it for an hour to clean it up and check the settings, as opposed to going through the aggravation of butting heads with the store you purchased it from and maybe going a month without a laptop, while they send it away.

netwhizkid

The New Packard Bell's are notorious I have heard from a few people that they are built as if by a three year old. It is quite a pity rally as the old school Packards were leaders of their time. The old saying they build them like they used to really does apply in this case!