Warranty Service with locally-unavailable HP

So I bought my Envy 14 in the States, and I'm now back in China, where I live 10 1/2 months a year. One of the things that was important to me when I bought the computer was the 1 year international warranty, which meant I could get it repaired here if I needed.

However after looking at the terms, it sounds vaguely like oversea,,s warranty service is dependent on availability - i.e. since the E14 isn't available in China, I might not be able to get it repaired. It's not busted, but the GPU has been crashing intermittently in games, so I'd like to know if the repair option is available if it gets worse - like if it starts crashing consistently. Considering that my laptop crashed FAST when confronted with a 500/800 overclock (50 mHz lower than a standard-clocked 5650 in most other laptops), and that it crashes intermittently at its stock 450/800, I'm pretty confident I got a significant underperformer, but if it reaches the point where it regularly fails to maintain 450/800 in a $1650 laptop, I need to know if I can get it replaced here.

So, ranting over - does anybody have experience with international warranty service on an HP laptop that's not available in the country where the service is being performed? I know the E14's sold in Taiwan, but I can't exactly hop over the strait to send my computer in, so that's not an option.

 

While I do not own an HP laptop in the situation described above, it is one of my concerns when looking at purchasing an HP laptop. I asked a couple of the online HP sales reps to clarify what would be my options and to the best of my understanding this is what happens.

If you purchase an HP laptop and take it out of the country of purchase, that laptop is now covered by HP's warranty policy of that country (the new country that you are in). So basically if that laptop is not sold in that new country then, you will not be able to get it repaired. The rep told me however I would be able to ship it back to the US (at my expense) to HP and they will try to rectify what ever problems there may be. After they are finished they would then ship the laptop only as far as the US, and it will be up to you to make the necessary arrangements to get it from the US to your location.

 

Wow - Why do they even call it 'international warranty' if it forces customers to dish out 250$+ in s/h + insurance as well as being SOL once it's fixed? Companies that pull this off should be fined/punished by the BBB/government in my opinion.

Go with Asus next time:
http://forums.ocworkbench.com/showthread.php?t=100145
You would of been covered in China.

 

I knew it was a risk, and I'm not certain that a little complaining couldn't get me what I want (people want to take the easy route here, so if you make refusing your request more trouble than helping you, you can often make it work), so I'm not particularly worried yet. The reason I went with the Envy 14 over any other similarly-sized-and-specced computer was largely for build-quality and battery life, both of which I'm very happy with. The Radiance display is nice, too.

It helps that there's an open-door HP repair center an easy bike ride away, so I can work it out in person rather than trying to do it on the phone, where they can always just hang up. Then again, this is all theoretical, as my clearly bottom-of-the-barrel 5650 hasn't caused any trouble since I installed the 10.8 drivers, so there's no specific need to repair for the time being.

 

In case you didn't know

 

I've seen that chart, but I wasn't referring to reliability, since every laptop I've ever purchased has needed service at one time or another, so I tend to consider the theoretical majority of laptops that don't (the white space in the graph above) to be a myth, so it's kind've moot whether it's a theoretical 84% or 74%, it's still imaginary until I've been proven otherwise. I've also found that a lot of the service that becomes necessary is easier, cheaper, and faster than an extended warranty if I just do it myself or take it into a shop here in China. This might end up biting me, though, since the E14's not available here, so they won't have all of the spare parts they usually have available when it comes time to service a laptop. Then again, if they can't service the E14 in China, what's the point in buying an extended warranty?

 

Ah, if you have doubts as to whether or not you can get your laptop repaired in CN, you might want to STOP pushing it to failure with overclocking, etc. It is wholly conceivable that any previous overclocking you might have done is responsible for your present reliability problems.

Why poke the bear?

Having said that you might get some benefit out of a good cleaning and reapplying heat-transfer goop. Grab a service manual on-line and see if you are up for disassembling the machine down to the cpu/gpu heatsink, cleaning old goop off properly, and then putting new goop on. Don't forget the reassembly process which is often more of a PITA than disassembly. Lots of little screws.

One of my consulting gigs is with a company that sends people to various remote and isolated places around the world. A point we make, and make very loudly, is for people to stop screwing around with their laptops, digital cameras, and sat phones. Set them up stock and leave them there. In many of these places it is impossible to stock replacement parts or machines on site and some times of the year it can take months (!!) to get a satchel of snail mail in much less a package with high-tech equipment. Things like food rations, replacement parts for water and energy generation equipment, and medical supplies take precedence over replacing or servicing a personal laptop.

That you are in China is of no matter. Not being able to access a repair center at a reasonable price puts you in much the same situation.

 

Percentage of laptops sold and built with nvidia+amd chips Not much to do with build quality, more to do with customers wanting as much power as possible in a case as small as possible.

 

I tried once to overclock, spent about 15 minutes at a fairly modest boost, it crashed, and I haven't even considered it since, so that's a fairly unlikely possibility.

Since it's very new, and most of the crashes I've experienced have occurred when the GPU clearly wasn't overheated (too soon to overheat, entire PC running cool, no hot air from vents), so it's not an overheating thing. I've got a small tube of Arctic Silver 5 I'd like to apply at some point, but I haven't wanted to deal with the trouble of dis- and reassembling, and since the computer runs cool already, I don't think it's very important.

In short, I'm not pushing my computer beyond what the manufacturer made it to do. If it fails in this situation, it's because it's got shoddy parts, not because I was too extreme for it.

I appreciate the advice, and I can see how you might have read that I was pushing the computer beyond its limits, but it's just a weak video card. Maybe it'll be fine, maybe it won't, you can never tell with these things.