{"id":441,"date":"2009-03-19T11:40:43","date_gmt":"2009-03-19T10:40:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.devco.net\/?p=441"},"modified":"2009-10-09T13:57:48","modified_gmt":"2009-10-09T12:57:48","slug":"warranty_service_compared","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.devco.net\/archives\/2009\/03\/19\/warranty_service_compared.php","title":{"rendered":"Warranty service compared"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had a thought recently when dealing with Apple and Microsoft on warranty fixes just how different things are, thought I’d sum up my experiences here:<\/p>\n

Dell<\/b>
I had a 15 inch Dell laptop, 3 year extended on-site warranty that I purchased to cover any issues.  During the time I had the laptop it all worked well except the battery died after about 2 years.  <\/p>\n

Contacted Dell about this, they pointed out batteries are consumables and so not covered, that was expected.  The kicker though was that I couldn’t even buy a new battery from them because since they only covered batteries for the 1st year, and the machines has been off the production lines for more than a year they simply stopped making them.<\/p>\n

2 year old laptop, 1 year left on it’s warranty and it was useless, awesome.<\/p>\n

Microsoft<\/b>
My Xbox 360 is showing the dreaded 3 red lights of death<\/a>, Microsoft has admitted the problem and offers a 3 year extended warranty for this problem.  I went to their site, saw I can book the machine in online for fixing, after filling everything in the page said it’s not available in my country, contact support.<\/p>\n

Contact support, tell them the problem and clearly point out I have filled in the form and that I am in the UK and thus not covered by the service offered by the form.  Support droid points me back to the same support page, but warning me that its not covered in all countries and that I should contact them if I am not covered.  <\/p>\n

I’ve gone through this little circle jerk 4 times now, each time with the same circular logic applied by the drones, I’m about to just towel fix<\/a> the 360 or upgrade to a 360 Elite.<\/p>\n

Apple<\/b>
I have a black 1.5 year old macbook, it’s pretty sweet but so far I’ve had a HDD and a battery die on me.  It too is on 3 year extended warranty.<\/p>\n

The HDD dying was inconvenient, I had to book in with a Genius<\/i> but they swapped it witout question or cost, I just had to reinstall my stuff – easily done with time machine.  I walk past an Apple Temple daily so no biggie there, they kept to their time schedules and the booking went smooth as can be, 3 days later my macbook was fixed.<\/p>\n

When the battery died they first said its a consumable and not covered, I pointed out it died suddenly and not gradually and so it must be a fault rather than consumption.  They posted free of charge a new battery, and paid for the old one to go back.  The next battery arrived the next day without fault.<\/p>\n

So all things considered, so far the Apple tax has proven a absolute bargain to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had a thought recently when dealing with Apple and Microsoft on warranty fixes just how different things are, thought I’d sum up my experiences here: DellI had a 15 inch Dell laptop, 3 year extended on-site warranty that I purchased to cover any issues.  During the time I had the laptop it all worked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[35,25],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devco.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devco.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devco.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devco.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devco.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=441"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.devco.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":511,"href":"https:\/\/www.devco.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/441\/revisions\/511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.devco.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devco.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.devco.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}