Currys Laptop - Out Of Warranty

[smurray139]

Hey everyone, I need some advice here please. Basically I think my laptop screen has started to fail. I received a blue screen of death about two weeks ago. When I play videos the screen messes up. I also noticed random different colours flashing across the screen randomly and then disappearing, so I'm assuming the screen has started to fail.

 

Last November I had to get the power within the laptop fixed as that failed. I emailed the Chief Executive of Dixons Retail last Friday about this, quoting their obligations under the Sales Of Good Act. I received this response today, which I am not happy with. I do not trust Currys / Dixons to examine my laptop at all. The last time I sent my laptop under warranty it went missing for a week and nobody knew where it was, showing their incompetence. Here is the email I received:

 

Thank you for your email addressed to our Chief Executive, John Browett. As a member of the Customer Action Team, I have been asked to investigate and contact you on John's behalf.

 

Having noted the points raised, it is disappointing that your laptop has encountered a fault and is now outside of the twelve month warranty period. We do take our obligations under the Sale of Goods Act very seriously and accordingly, we have a process in place to assist customers in situations similar to your own. In order to allow us to resolve this matter, I recommend that you take the laptop to your local PC World or Currys store and purchase our Fault and Fix service, currently priced at £50.00. Your laptop will be taken to our workshop and the fault assessed. If it is subsequently confirmed that the fault is due to a manufacturing defect, your laptop will be repaired free of charge and your £50.00 inspection fee will be refunded. If the fault is deemed to be accidental damage or neglect, you will be given a quote for the cost of the repair work and will then have the option of proceeding with this or having the laptop returned unrepaired. For full details, please visit your local store and ask to speak with a KnowHow expert or duty manager.

 

Thank you for reading this far, could I get some advice and help on how to reply to this? As I said I am not happy with sending my laptop off to be examined by their engineers. They could easily "damage" the laptop and blame it on me for all I know.

[dx100uk]

they are correct, thats how SOGA works, you pay [someone] to inspect the item, if its then down to a failure, then its repaied FOC and the inspection fee refunded also.

 

you don't have to use currys to inspect it, though they will have to rectify the issues.

 

the warranty means nowt , SOGA is your friend.

 

dx

[smurray139]

Thanks for your response dx. I have a few more issues I would like to put past you. I bought the laptop last April, and in November it broke down. Currys have a 28 day return policy. They returned the laptop on the very last day. I would have been entitled to a new machine the next day.

 

Now I have screen issues. Surely this shows that the machine has not been fit for purpose? All these problems within just more than a year? Nothing has happened to this laptop, it is not due to neglect or being treated poorly. What are my rights here?

 

Do I absolutely have to allow Currys to repair the faults, or can I request a replacement if there are manufacturing problems with the machine?

 

Thank you again.

 

I have read that I can request a repair or a replacement immediately, if the goods are faulty (and found to be faulty by an engineers report) . Is this true?

[C-130]

Hi smurray139. I am a colleague in Dixons. i wil save the sorry spiel that you have received. I would like to say we have changed recently with 99% of check ups etc being done in house. Now with where you stand with the SOGA after 6 months you must allow prove the goods were inherently faulty with an engineers report and then allow use to dispute this if we choose.

 

As you know we have a policy in place with reminds all staff of consumers rights. So what we offer is fault and fix £50 (far cheaper than most place will charge for the same service) to establish whats wrong with the machine. Following that you can tell us what to do and we do it basically. So you know now we are TIMED to a max of 10 days usually to check and return laptops. You can of course have someone else produce the report but we can dispute it then. And have done in the past.

[dx100uk]

that didn't make an awful lot of sense to me c-130, was you cargo door still open when you wrote it?

 

if what you appear to be saying is curry's are taking the money from the punter and then choosing themselves to deem it faulty or not under SOGA, then this is sadly not correct.

 

i refer you too:

http://www.oft.gov.uk/business-advice/treating-customers-fairly/sogahome/

 

SM: sadly its not within SOGA that you can demand replacement /refund even though you have potentially have two issues since new

they are allowed to continue to repair, typically within a 28day turn around [but again there are no hard and fast laws]

 

dx

[C-130]

Sorry I was sleep typing. It becomes difficult to articulate after 9 hours of these problems with customers face to face. -)

 

To clarify. Currys offer a new fault and fix service which can be used as an engineers report. In this service we can establish a) the fault b)the likely cause of the fault and c) based on the service history how to prevent the fault in the future or to write the laptop off. In this service you can choose to use it for the £50 for us to see if it is accidental damage or a inherent fault. I will say at this point the engineer it goes to will not now anything about it being a SOGA issue nor will the customer service team ins tore if you don;t mention it.

 

Just go in and say I bought this laptop. Its not working now so I want to establish the problem. i understand you can diagnose the problem for £50 and give me a test report for it. Get that report. Then take it to currys h/o as it is our word then which we can't dispute.

 

So it is not us saying if it is faulty. It is recognising the fault and the likely cause of the fault.

 

With time scales currys now aim to repair all laptops within 10-25 days. A maximum of 21 usually. Remember though that is 21 repair days not shipping days. So if it takes 7 days to arrive and return add them to the 21 days. Giving you the 28 day figure.