Expired Warranty renewal

I have a dell laptop (E1705) that I bought 7/2/2006 and had a warranty on until 7/2/2007. My warranty expired and I have taken excellent care of my laptop since then but this did not stop my laptop from dieing and refusing now to turn on.
Now, I know this is somewhat slippery but is it possible to reactivate my warranty on the laptop and then have them fix it under warranty? My immediate thought was "of course not" but after looking at the dell warranty website and entering my service code there was an offer for "Limited Warranty Reinstatement" for $49 or else I could select "limited warranty upgrades" and extend my coverage until 7/2/2011 for $149.

It would seem that I could purchase the warranty again. Has anyone done this? If I do get the warranty again do you think they would service the laptop or would I have spent $50 for nothing?

 

I've never done this, and I don't think I would.

If you can get that *Limited Warranty Statement / Upgrades* to work for you by paying for it ~ and Dell honors fixing your E1705...that's great.

Or, would you rather put that money towards a new lappy??

Good luck!

Cin

 

I suggest you call them...which is the best option anyway

 

@brbrus..I'm just checking to see what you decided to do with the warranty situation!

Did you purchase it?

Cin

 

Someone on the Dell boards was going through a similar dilemma and I've elected to see if they purchase it first and what the results are before I do so myself. I'll keep you updated though - it would certainly be nice if you could do this, though it seems counterintuitive (especially considering Dell's apparrent track record with laptops failing after a few years).

If it doesn't work, I'll probably just get a replacement gfx card on ebay and install it myself... and hope that fixes it.

 

Yeah, that may be a good idea! If it doesn't work, a GFX card from ebay shan't be to expensive..

Look forward to your updates! Good luck!


Cin

 

Ping. Anybody home? I'm about 30 days out from mine expiring and of course the Dell chat person wants to sell me the $212 one year warranty when I know a year ago the XPS American speaking rep got me the 99 dollar year. What exactly is the 49 dollar
Limited Warranty Reinstatement? What does it do? There is so little info on the site, and from dealing with Dell, not too suprised either.

 

From what I can take of this: You would pay $49 as a fee to *reinstate your warranty*, then you would choose the *limited warranty upgrades* to extend your coverage out to a certain date.

Now, since yours has not expired per se, you do have some leverage.

Don't talk to Dell Chat..Call and speak with a Warranty Rep, and advise you may want to extend your warranty out...and see what they have to offer to you.

See this page (taken direct from Dell's site) for information on warranty extensions:

http://www.dell.com/content/topics/segtopic.aspx/service_ext_warranty?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

And, on this page..you can enter your Service Tag number and see what pricing/options are availi' specific for you:

http://support.dell.com/support/top...e_sign_in?~ck=ln&c=us&cs=19&l=en&lnki=0&s=dhs

Hope that helps!

Cin

 

$212 for one year seems exhorbitant.

BTW, if you purchased your laptop using a creddit card, you may already have an extra year of warranty, see my sig.

 

If you want the extra warranty you should buy it up front, else forget about it. Even a hundred is too much. What is the likelihood of a part going bad? Probably not going to happen, but say it does. What would it cost you to replace it? Probably not that much. I say stick with 1 yr warranties and pocket the extra money you would have spent on it. Keep it around in case something does go wrong, then you fix it yourself, but if nothing does then you've basically saved yourself that much money. Thats how i see it anyways.

 

If the LCD backlight fails, or GPU fails, or motherboard fails, then it can cost $$$ to fix.
Getting a warranty depends on how expensive the laptop is, and the cost of the warranty relative to that.

 

Doesn't the extra 1 year warrany on our 1530/1330's only cover what is specific to the GPU issue? Or, am I reading it wrong.?

Here:
http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/...ment-to-all-affected-customers-worldwide.aspx

Cin

 

Dell let me renew my warranty after I was 2 years out of it! So far it seems like everything is going to work out and, for less than I would have paid to replace the GPU, I will be getting a new Gfx card and have two more years of safety (for only $212!). The Dell guy that sold me the warranty did say that I shouldn't mention that the meltdown happened during the out of warranty period, but I think that's only common sense.

_B

 

That's good to hear! I'm glad it worked out for you!

I think by the time I need to extend, I will probs already have replaced my lappy!


Cin

 

Wait, so you will be getting another 2 years of warranty (till March 2011) for just $212 ?
That means you effectively got a 5 year warranty for $212
Congrats !

 

Yes, I will have had more or less 5 years of warranty for the price of 2. One thing I did do was use the Dell Chat function as a safeguard and copied the conversation and its conversation reference number down in case any issues came up with them not wanting to honor my warranty. The sales representative repeatedly assured me that what I was doing was completely fine and would result in me getting a replacement card for free after purchasing the warranty.

In response to the earlier remarks about a $212 1 year warranty renewal. See if that includes accident insurance (which would have added $60 a year to the warranty and which I declined). Also, rather than get the limited warranty renewal, I purchased the extended warranty; though I'm not entirely sure what the difference is between the two to be honest.

Regardless, both Dell and my university's Tech Support office have honored the warranty so far and I'm hoping to get my laptop back from IT in working condition next week after the part arrives.
_B

 

Update:
Since the part DG008 geforce 7900 GS Go graphics card was so far backordered dell sent me a refurbished Dell Studio 1737 with 2Gb Ram, 250gb HD, Intel Core 2 Duo CPU T6400 at 2Ghz 2Ghz, Vista Ultimate, and a Radeon Mobility 3650 gfx card with 1gb onboard ram it would seem.

Now, almost all the specs are much better than my original laptop and I'm also pleased to have a working battery once again. The one problem is I don't know much about the Radeon card though. Does anyone know how the Radeon 3650 rates with the Geforce 7900 GS I used to have? I haven't had a chance to really fool with the computer or push it but everything I've experienced so far has been great and I couldn't be happier with Dell (which seems to be a rarity).

Overall, moral of the story would seem to be - don't replace the part on old dell laptops. Just get a warranty and they'll hopefully take care of you. Heck, they gave me an awesome new computer for just over $200.

Cheers,
_B

 

According to:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html
The 3650 is about 10% slower than the 7900, but the rest of the system should more than make up for it

Congrats, you got an AWESOME deal

Dell FTW !!!!

 

man i just did the same thing you did. my dell laptop expired a couple of months ago and it got really messed up during the period in which it was out of warranty. i think the problem is the gpu and lcd and it is quite costly to replace both. just today i got a new two year warranty but like you i did not trust dell so i used the chat instead and i copied down the chat and saved it. hopefully they will honor their warranty and fix my comp, it's so messed up..