What do you do when you're denied warranty service because the vendor claims your system was damaged by a mythical spill of some liquid? I often hear from people who know they didn't spill the milky substance they are being told has invalidated their warranty, but can't prove it. One reader in such a situation however recently found a way to get his warranty honored, and in the process made a point from the d
Fortunately, the reader is a fighter and was not about to give up on getting his extended warranty honored. Just before his local CompUSA closed its doors for good, he demanded copies of all their records concerning the attempts to repair his laptop. He also contacted Nexicore and got them to confirm from their records that the motherboard had been worked on both the first and second time it was in, without anyone noticing the supposed liquid damage. "So for me to have caused this alleged liquid damage, I would have had to spill something on it in the 22 hours I had the laptop between Oct. 22 when I picked it up and Oct. 23 when I returned it. So if Nexicore is correct about this being spillage, isn't it a lot more likely it happened at Nexicore or at CompUSA?"
Having assembled his evidence, the reader sent an e-mail with all of it to the president of Assurant Solutions, copying officials at Toshiba and Nexicore as well as me. He demanded they honor his TAP agreement either by finding an authorized Toshiba repair facility other than Nexicore or offering him a cash settlement.
"I got a call the next day after I addressed my letter to Assurant Solutions president, so I guess going to the top works. They offered me replacement value of something like $619, and I suppose that would have been fine if I hadn't been without a laptop for 20 weeks in their 'care' and since July 2007 in total. So I pushed back and they went up to another model that would be $799.99. I debated if I should push for the full price I paid in 2005, $1,500, but I've been without the laptop long enough."
I think Assurant Solutions was wise to make that deal, because the reader was very ready to make a lot more noise about this through me and others in the press. "I knew that if I wanted to I could push this even harder and make a huge case out of this. I would make it an 'industry issue' and point out the whole extended warranty problem, the money gusher that they are for the retail industry but with a poor pay off for the users, like you've been pointing out with flat screen TVs. If the cash cow of extended warranties can be shown to be loosing steam because of terrible service and an inability to fix the products, the financial people will take notice. The retailers and insurance companies do NOT want the message that only idiots and suckers will buy extended warranties on big screen TVs and laptops. That will hurt them all on the bottom line."
Losing out on all that extended warranty money would be spilled milk that the vendors certainly would cry over. So if a vendor is not owning up to their warranty obligations to you, take a leaf out of the reader's book and push them hard. And don't forget to copy me at Foster@gripe2ed.com.
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