Refusal To Honor Warranty, Help!

I posted the following on the lenovo forums:

I'm also posting here for advice. If lenovo refuses to honor my request, should I sue them in a small claims court? To me, the amount I spent on this laptop was mind-boggling, and right now I'm pretty much despairing. Any help at all would be greatly appreciated.

 

Sorry to hear about your misfortune. You might want to PM Mark@Lenovo over on the Lenovo forums. He can sometimes cut through the red tape and move things along.

 

You can request photo proof of spill damage and take it from there.

Good luck, you'll need it.

 

Thanks for the advice so far! I've PM'd Mark at Lenovo, and phoned them about pictures.

As posted on lenovo:

Is there someone else I can contact/be more aggressive about getting the pictures? The lady sounded very annoyed at having to talk to me, so I'm not sure what to expect.

 

Forget "the lady".

Call the EzServ back, ask to speak to a Supervisor and be persistent about it. Do NOT allow them to transfer you to billing again.

Good luck.

 

I called again, and they said they would redirect me to a supervisor, but I got sent to billing again. No on the pictures again.

Third time I called a different number, and they said the issue had been escalated only this morning- I would get my pictures, I just have to wait. I got a call immediately after from the representative I was chatting with, who said the same thing, but also seemed annoyed that I had "already called the depot three times."

 

This is the picture they've sent me. Does this mean anything to you? I'm not sure how to interpret it, or hos this type of damage would normally occur.

 

Wow, if this really is your laptop, then at least we know where the burning smell came from!

Looks like some SMD components (resistors?) on your socketed CPU (MQ) have burnt out. I guess the fan failed, and possibly caused this.

Doesn't look like water damage to me.

 

If you're in a state with a consumer affairs department or your attorney general's office has a consumer division, I would file a complaint and seek 2X or 3X (ususally provided for by statute) the cost of your laptop as damages. That might get them more reasonable. I'm not a failure analysis engineer but that don't look like water damage to me.

 

White powder-y stuff on the RH side of the picture could be attributed to moisture damage. I'm not saying that it is, or that it's not in this particular case.

You'll have a tough time winning this one IMO.

Good luck.

 

It's definitely mine, unless they went through the effort of pulling out my ssd so I'd recognize the sticker on its edge.

That said, they've suddenly decided to reduce the repair price from $650 to $250 "for being a valued Lenovo customer." I'm not sure whether this is some sort of goodwill sprung out of nowhere or they're trying to get me to pay at least partially for something that isn't my fault (possibly related to the fact that the fan suddenly failed working a month ago and they replaced it).

Do you guys think I should eat the $250, or try to fight? The part that scares me most isn't the $250, but the fact that this happened out of nowhere, and that a couple months down the line I could have another perhaps similar problem and get another bill for repairs, one I won't be able to pay (for context, I can, with some difficulty, pay $250 but for the original $650 I would've been able to do jack ).

 

My take:
1.During one of the recent repairs they "forgot" to reapply thermal paste.
2.Previous excessive application of thermal paste covers the resistors that lie next to the CPU (which are burnt in your case).
1,2 have happened multiple times to me.
1+2 --> All the heat from the CPU with the help of the paste transferred to the resistors --> melted the circuit --> causing a further short --> your picture.

But the above means that you should have noticed very high temperatures before it melted on you.

Good luck

 

Tough call.

If it were me, I'd fight out of sheer principle.

With that being said, the most reasonable approach would be to eat $250, and feebay that lemon as soon as you get it back, then buy another machine.

My $0.02 only...

 

Slightly off-topic, I would like to know the stance of Lenovo regarding warranty, self-repair... I'm planning to buy a T450s in the next few weeks, and I already have a few spare parts for upgrading the laptop, a SSD, some memory. Will it void the warranty if I open the laptop and change some these pieces (HDD, memory) myself ?

 

These parts are user replaceable so your warranty will be fine. That is if you don't damage something in the process but that is highly unlikely.

 

I do not understand how can they say there is spill damage, when there is burn damage.
I do not think that spill (like water) could result in burn damage like that ..

 

maybee someone else had there way with your machine