Board Thread:Fun and Games/@comment-35065776-20180906072204

First of all, I'm not doing this to promote sales for any specific laptop company - I'm retired/unemployed, and am just sharing my experience in case it can be of help to some folks here. I thought of this when I saw that Ori's laptop fell on the floor and her screen broke. Took me back to my working days.

For several years I did warranty repairs for Dell and Lenovo. I've also purchased other brands of laptops for my kids in the past, and have learned from those experiences as well.

Dell and Lenovo offer warranties where, beyond the basic warranty, you can have repairs done on-site to you don't have to 'give up' the laptop (or desktop computer - warranty coverage is the same for both types) for a lenfgthy period of time. There are some circumstances, usually for older models still under warranty, where if 2 or 3 visits can't get the computer back to normal operation they will want to pull it into their repair facility or replace it entirely. In these cases you can usually refuse the 'pulling in' process since you paid for a warranty with on-site repair. Replacing is usually reserved for extreme circumstances of a stubborn repair, and if it is offered, they really mean it and you should listen.

When these on-site repairs are scheduled, you have the option of having the owrk done at your home address or work address (if your business will allow it) so you don't have to take the day off from work to wait for the repair tech. The repair tech is obligated to call you as soon after 8am as possible to offer a 2-hour arrival window. the repair is usually expected, by the manufacturer, to take an hour or less - this is often unrealistic, so give yourself 2 hours at least for the repair, since it can be more complicated than the manufacturer thinks. Repair techs are normally from a 2nd party company with a contract with the manufacturer, but they usually have good training, past experience building and repairing computers both for themselves and others, and have resources available to them - while on site - that will help them resolve nearly any issue possible. if they can't fix your computer on their first attempt, chances are it isn't their fault. Could be a bad part sent, wrong part sent, or not enough parts sent (usually becauwse of an underlyiung problem that couldn't be diagnosed until other parts were replaced to eliminate a different problem that masked the one remaining.

So basically, having the chance to have a repair done on your home ground while you wait - essentially a 1-2 day turnaround, based on the time of day you call it in - is pretty darn convenient. Here's the basic schedule of how it goes down (in the US - other countries might vary, but not by much):

1 - you call in the problem

2 - Dell (to use them as an example) tries to troubleshoot the problem with you on the phone, in casee it's software related

3 - if they determine it is hardware-related (and, of course, if your warranty is still active) they will determine what parts are most likely to fix the problem they have identified, and place an order for them under your account.

4 - those parts are pulled from the warehouse - somewhere in the US, based on the type of account (business, residential)

5 - Parts are shipped overnight to a pickup point for the technicians - for us it was a FedEx distribution center centrally located in our territory (central NU)

6 - a work order is created and sent to the company whose technicians normally cover that territory or company (we did both consumer accounts and corporate accounts)

7 - once received, the work order is assigned to a specific technician

8 - Technician logs into his account in the AM and sees the work he's been assigned; normally he/she will come up with a logical order of work for the day so that travel between repairs is minimized. I tried to start out farthest away from home so that at the end of the day I was as close to home as possible. There are always exceptions, if a customer needs work done art a specific time of day - they might have meetings in the afternoon so need the repair done in the AM, so the technician is obligated to rearrange theier schedule to accommodate the customers.

9 - Technician goes to the parts pickup site, gets parts for the day, inspects them for any damage or obvious defects, and if there is a problem will contact the customer to reschedule or delay the repair if the part sent is obviously not going to work.

10 - once this is done, the technician heads out to their first repair location and the day officially begins.

Lenovo basically worked the same way except for that we picked up our Lenovo parts from USP instead. lenovo also required us to take photos before and after the repair, so if you have a Le novo repair, the technician isn't being creepy. He's required to do that or else if he can't upload photos of the repair, he cannot close his work order and his day stalls at that point. he can't log that repair as complete, can't log himself en route to his next repair - I forgot to ake photos a few times after that policy started - I had to return to the home (usually) and explain that I had to take a photo of the computer. Awkward situation, since I agreed that it was a weird and unnecessary requirement, but we had no say.

Dell and Lenovo are the only companies I am aware of that have this kind of on-site repair service in place - HP was doing it for a while but I believe they reverted to having the laptops sent in to their repair sites. Full disclosure - while we were doing their repairs, we got an inordinate amount of defective or damaged parts sent to us. They refused to believe the problem was on theire end, so I'm guessing after they changed their methods they realized where the problem really was.

Anyway ... I also bought an Asus laptop for my son off of NewEgg  a few years ago (he has a Dell now) and it was a real eye-opener of an experience. My son is a unique individual - he wouldn't tell me right away that his laptop wasn't working - we found out when he started causing overages in our cellphone account because he had to use his phone to get on the internet. But by then the initial warranty period whereby NewEgg would handle the repair for us had expired. So we had to deal with a second party warranty company, which caused about a month's delay because they didn't communicate very well with newEgg.

And then, once they actually got the report of the defective laptop, THEN we found out they were only the warranty company - we had to deal with yete a THIRD company that was the actual REPAIR service. And they took their sweet time once we managed to get a return label from them (practically another month) and send it in. And after another month they had said nothing, and when I called them to see what was going on, THEN they told us the repair was too expensive, so they were going to prorate the original cost of the laptop and give us a partial refund. No choice possible on our part - so for a laptop that was less than a year old when it actually broke down,. we got maybe 55-65% of the original cost back. And I use NewEgg as an example because most online companies that sell computers will have this same type of repair service in place for any extended warranty.

Which is why I went to great lengths to tell why the repair experience with Dell or Lenovo is so much better. Because, if you're still reading at this point, it's painfully obvious that it IS a MUCH better and less painful experience.

Now, also in the interest of full disclosure, screens are no longer covered by a warranty unless it is the most expensive warranty the company offers. the advent of touch-screen functionality is, I believe, the cause of this - because there's now so much more wear and tear on the screen than ever before. So be sure to read the fine print in what your warranty actually covers before you pay for it - to make sure it covers what you feel it should. But - whenever I arrived on site and discovered that the screen had been physically damage, I was required to call it in immediately to describe the screen to the company rep, give my opinion on if it seemed to be physical damage or an inherent defect that caused the problem, and then they would decide if I should continue with the repair. I also had to take a photo of the screen (almost impossible to represent the defect or damage if the screen didn't work at all) and upload it into the work order when I was done. When I had to stop working, they were just beginning to have us send the photo to the company rep on the spot so they could see what we did - which was good for us, because if, later on, they decided we shouldn't have replaced the screen because when they received it back they determined it was not a warranty-covered problem - we would be held responsible for the cost of the replacement screen. Our company backed us up at first but if we had a pattern of replacing what we shouldn't, we would get docked for at least a part of the cost of that screen.

It could also be a bit risky telling a customer that the screen issue wasn't covered by their warranty - because if they couldn't feel an actual crack in the screen they never believed it was cracked. The screen was always covered by a protective coating, in much the same way a car windshield is, so that unless you smashed it with a hammer, you wouldn't feel the rough edges of a crack - but it was obvious to us when there was physical damage to the screen. One customer almost came to blows with my (well, AT me is closer to the truth) because I told him the screen was cracked and not covered. I had to call Dell and have him describe the cobweb pattern on the screen to the Dell rep, and Dell took responsibility for deciding how to proceed - which let me off the hook for any damage to MY screen that might have occurred if I hadn't passed it on (pretty diplomatically, if I might say so) to Dell.

But if the screen wasn't covered by the warranty, there was always the option of having the customer provide a credit card humber over the phone to the manufacturer in order to still get the repair done while I was there with the part - paid for, of course - or else they could choose to send the laptop in for the screen repair, which cost less but took longer. But there was always a way to get the repair done then and there so the customer was inconvenienced as little as possible.

That's all I've got on the subject - sorry for the lengthiness of it all, but I wanted to share as much information as possible on the subject. Some of the basic processes in the system may have changed ( I 'retired' back in fall of 2015) but it's overall been the same for years - the only real big change has been to the screen coverage. Like I said - while it might look like I'm promoting sales for Dell or Lenovo, I'm not - but their warranty repair services are second to none (even if you might end up paying for a screen replacement). Nothing beats having the work done while you wait - and it's also how I got that job in the first place. A warranty repairman came to our house, while I was unemployed, to fix my son's laptop. Next day I was on the internet checking out the company, and less than 2 weeks later (had to take my son to college in the interim) I was doing my first repair.

ok - NOW I'm done. :-D 