Boutique and Warranties

Hello, just some info and knowledge to share with you guys to be used buying a new system!

Boutique Shops:

Boutique shops make tailor made computer systems for unique user needs. Shops like this are indeed more rare today then one might think. The following companies are today wrongly referered as boutique due to historical reasons then anything else. Mainly becouse they were the first ones to offer the user the possibility to choose what goes into a system in terms of its components with great success:

* AW
* Voodoo PC
* Sager and their resellers
* etc etc

In other words, today if they are boutique so is HP, Toshiba, DELL etc, as they to offer the same services to their notebooks today (you can select memory, CPU, HDD, video card etc etc).

So what makes a boutique today shop? Well, today there isn't so much a boutique shop but a boutique services since most computers sold by so called boutique shops don't have any shop specific enhancements to specs orginally provided by the parts manufacturers (Clevo for the barebones and so one). They at most assemble the system and make test on some samples, but the later almost any shop does it to any new laptop.

Take for instance paint jobs, that can be applied or not, its a boutique service. In case of Clevo, some shops (even Sager resellers) offer paint jobs. They allow one to choose how you would like your laptop to be painted. This is the standard boutique service, since there is a potential for your laptop to look unique and exclusive. But that is the least IMHO one would expect.

Just take note, that this act alone voids the Warranty provided by the ODM over the chassis (barabone)! So basically for instance as far I know both the ODM and distributors do not provide warranties by default over the barebones (chassis) that were custom painted, and I stress barebones. So basically say if a reseller of some big distributor goes ballistic and your barebone is painted you may need to forget clamiing for any warranty over the barebone and start planing to buy a new one (more or less $1000 is the cost of d901c barebone, chassis + motherboard).

Other Boutiques do more then just painting the laptop. They actually enhance the system with some features not available by default.

Warranties:

When a person buys a custom made system to true boutique shops, there are two kinds of warranties. One is the warranty for each component in the system. Another is the warranty given by the shop or retailer to the overall system.

Talking about part warranties, once someone (including shops) enhance a component of a system by any means (including paint) no one is required to honor the warranty over that specific part that have been changed (and no one will) except the shop itself. This does not include only the barebone built by Clevo, but also RAM, CPU, HDDs manufacturers.

Nevertheless, just becouse a part is enhanced it does not mean that one will loose the right to claim warranties over other specific parts. Say for instance, one painted the chassis. It does not mean that one looses the manufacturers warranty over the CPU if defective or exibits malfunction over a period of time. Meaning that the part manufacturer warranty still covers it.

What you may loose is the man labor (part of the global warranty) including the ability to claim for shipping costs covered by the reseller, since the reseller may refuse to work on a changed system without payment. This again can be a service diferentiator since some don't mind to work on it under warranty even in this situations.

So when you buy a system is indeed very important that you get the warranty statements of all part manufacturers (part warranties) and the shop (global warranty).

You may ask why? Well if the shop closes doors you may still be able to replace the defective parts without costs apart from shipping and labor (if you don't replace it yourself). One other advantage is if the shop purely refuses to honor the warranty of that specific part dur to some reason, which they can't really without providing enough evidence that failed part is due to some modification you did. The cost of providing that evidence if required is not really yours!

I personally have built all my desktops, and this is from the knowledge and experience I got from it. It is very important you get the information about all parts used (including that part numbers).

Within the realm of notebooks all were branded except from the Clevo in the sig that I bought from a small boutique shop. I'm confortable with the fact that the shop can go bzerk, since if that happens I do have the skills to repair it myself. Furthermore I do have all the parts numbers (the ones provided by the manufacturer) of my components and I can always ask who supplied it and gave them a call in this context. Furthermore even if I don't know, I can always question the ODM and it is required to reply to my call.

It happend to my brother for instance that a Creative card was malfunctioning. The shop said it would require 15 days to get a replacement. He called Creative in Europe and after 3 days he had a guy at his door with a replacement and to collect the defective one.

It is true that a warranties are as good as the company behind it. But you my find out that you have more companies behind your system that you may think in the first (or are told). Just make sure that you can contact them. That is why some people (mainly people that have the skills to assemble a PC, not that difficult, it is almost like lego nowardays) prefer to buy to companies such as RJTech.

Trance
PS: All my systems lived long after its respective global warranty (and part warranties). Only replaced my system when it could no longer handle the demands of new software at any degree.