I placed a laptop into a local computer repair shop ( not a chain) to have the power socket replaced as it had become loose and was not charging the battery. when I went back after the agreed two weeks the shop told me they had LOST the laptop, but were investigating where it was.

Now today they phoned and told me they cannot find my laptop, but have one on stock I can have as replacement (no details of the laptop specs were given) but i still need to pay the cost of the original repair.

What are my rights on this?

Tried to contact my local trading standards but Durham have given the service over to CAB and cant get through on the national number they give.

I placed a laptop into a local computer repair shop ( not a chain) to have the power socket replaced as it had become loose and was not charging the battery. when I went back after the agreed two weeks the shop told me they had LOST the laptop, but were investigating where it was.

 

Now today they phoned and told me they cannot find my laptop, but have one on stock I can have as replacement (no details of the laptop specs were given) but i still need to pay the cost of the original repair.

 

What are my rights on this?

 

Tried to contact my local trading standards but Durham have given the service over to CAB and cant get through on the national number they give.

You can't really lose a laptop in a local repair shop can you ?

Sounds like it was stolen and they will not report it as such or claim on the shops insurance.

The shop are responsible for the safekeeping of your property and if they fail to do so, then you are entitled to the value at time of loss. You don't have to accept any laptop they are offering as replacement and can ask for the current cash value, so a laptop bought for say £600 originally might be expected to last 6 years and the loss happened after 2 years, it might have £400 of its value left. Given your laptop did have this fault, it would have affected current value by cost of the repair and therefore logically the repair cost could be deducted.

I can't think of any consumer law that helps here. It is a contract issue between parties. You can take them to court, if you are not happy with the solution to your loss being offered.

the shop wont have insurance for theft of stock- miles too expensive a premium.

you need to work out what your lappy would be worth today in both its dodgy state and fully working order. As for paying for a repair that didnt happen, are they serious? On this latter point they cant show a repair was done to your satisfaction so how can they charge for it. For the former point, again what is the replacement one- I would bet it isnt a similar one as the lost one.

Now, did they give you a receipt/wrok sheet when you took it in? If so they should be looking at every laptop that has passed through their doors and see if they ahve one that has supposedly been collected but is still sitting there.

A friend of mine had the opposite problem, he had a shop that repaied an item (video-remember them) and the owner took it away and then claimed it was not his one. All of the repairs had triplicate documents and a job card plus a reference number painted onto the insideof the case of the machine but for thoroughness we spent an evening going through every docket and every itme on the shelves to see if there was an error and the customer had been given t he wrong unit. We foind lost of stuff that hadntt been collected from years back but no error.

They aren't charging the OP for the repair to his (or her) laptop.

The OP can claim for the cost to replace their non-working laptop, not its "repaired value".

They are saying "we can't offer a replacement that is itself in need of repair, so we are offering a replacement that has been repaired (or wasn't faulty), and are entitled to the repair cost of that machine".

Otherwise the OP is "getting a repair done for free" (betterment).

Mind you, the OP should ask for the cost of repair to be credited in exchange for the extra time they've been deprived of a working laptop ......

Been to the shop and the replacement is actually a slightly younger and better model, and the owner has waved the repair fee also and given a personal apology , so a good result all round. He believes that a now ex employee has stolen a few items from the shop and it is now with the police.

Thanks for the update.

Have amended the thread title to reflect the outcome.