Warranties on Refurbished Laptops
After doing extensive research on refurbished laptop warranties, it became clear there was a great deal of lying by major distributors of laptops.
When you buy a new laptop from a major computer manufacturer, you get the standard 12 month limited parts and labor warranty with the endless amount of conditions. But with a refurbished laptop you would unlikely receive a limited parts and labor warranty from a laptop manufacture.
The next issue is the battery. Most warranties plans for laptops have no warranty coverage for the battery. This particular laptop warranty covered the battery for 6 months. What happened to the 12 month warranty? Is the battery not part of the laptops main components? I know I could not use the laptop without the battery. What type of wishy-washy nonsense is the manufactures trying push down our throats?
Now, some businesses buy or lease large qualities of laptops at discounts, and after a two or three years they resell the laptops back to the manufacture, so they can recover some of their original investment principal. The laptops that make it through the quality control department are re-tested and brought back to the original design specifications to be resold to the consumer.
Its estimated that people who return their laptop (within 30 days) after purchase only account for 4 percent of the over-all refurbished market. The other 96 percent of refurbished laptops re-sold are between two and three years old, which the standard and extended manufactures warranties have expired.
Lets say you purchased a laptop for $400 dollars on the internet from a standard laptop distributor. And lets say for discussion the laptop was damaged in transit. You would want your money back.
The laptop was created so you take your computer with you"wherever you decided to go to. The warranty sounds contradictory to the design goal of building and manufacturing a laptop.
Have I heard of manufactures not honoring a laptop warranty for either refurbished or new laptop? The answer is yes. Its sad, but most manufacturers will do whatever they can to either slow the entire process of fixing your computer under warranty, or void the warranty based on some wishy-washy conditions set forth in their warranty agreement.
This means you spent a total of $510 dollars total; $400 for the original total purchase price for the computer (including original shipping charges), plus an additional $110 to ship the laptop back to the distributor. So you spent $510 total minus receiving the refund check of $246.50, so you had a realized loss of $263.50"and you still do not have a working laptop!
What about warranties for citizens of foreign countries? Basically, you get no warranty of any kind if you buy the laptop in the U.S and have the computer shipped to a foreign country.
In addition, only 45 percent of distributors offer a parts and labor warranty outside of the manufactures warranty"and the majority of these warranties are for 30 days. How sad.
What good is it to have a warranty, if youre not going to honor it? The bottom-line, the basic manufactures warranty is worth very little, since it protects the manufacture and not the consumer.
Sincerely, John Roth