Standard warranty practice?

My Intel Advance-N 6235 Wi-Fi + Bluetooth Combo card has quit. No available netwokrs are found(diagnostics says the card is not found) but have reinstalled drivers, reseated the card, and the card shows working in devices. The company I purchased it from wants the whole laptop sent in for them to change the card. We are talking a $25 card. Why would I want to risk my $2500+ (P373EM-3D) machine. They said for internal components the whole system has to shipped back, Would this include memory or hard drives? Anyway is this standard practice among the retailers?

Stew

 

It all depends on where you buy it from, they will have different policies. If thats what they say to do theres not much else you can do about it besides buying a card yourself and changing it. You'll want to check if that will void any warranty though.

 

I figured as much so I went ahead and ordered one, I just wondered if this was standard practice for everybody. I wonder what does adding 4 sticks of ram and a couple of hard drives do for the warranty? Or a msata drive? Should have enquired a little more about warranty details before purchase. Next time I will know better but I thought the whole purpose of buying these machines was the expandability and service.

Anyway thanks

Stew

 

You'll want to contact your reseller to see what their policy is. For Sager computers they dont care what you add they just wont cover those parts. But other Clevo resellers will void your warranty even by opening up the bottom panel. To be safe contact them directly or send a PM to them if they have a rep here to get exact policies.

 

Thanks looks like I will be doing my next purchase with you! It is my fault for not research the warranties better.

Thanks again

Mark

 

Hey Stew57,

I think we spoke via email. Just to follow up on things; first I'm sorry to hear that the card is still giving you problems. Did you happen to verify that you don't have MAC address filtering enabled on your router? DHCP settings look good? Any liquid damage to the card?

 

needless to say, any warranties are posted fairly inconspicuously on the various builders'/resellers' respective websites. it's not like there's any research to be had per se, maybe just look up other people's experiences.


Sent from my PI39100 using Board Express

 

Quite right my fault for not being more observant. Not blaming anyone, just don't want to go through the bother of removing the drives (I have customer, renter, as well as personal data on them. Plus the expense of shipping with the possible damage seems unworthy it for a $22 card. Amazon had them for $22 shipping included.

To be clear the card started dropping the network once in a while. Wait a few minutes and it would be possible to reconnect. It started happening more and more frequently and having to wait longer to reconnect. Finally no network found at all. All other machines and devices connect fine. No setting or drivers were changed until the drivers were replaced to make sure it was not a driver problem. The machine is in pristine condition so there is no water damage.

I am sorry I put the model number as it identifies the reseller. Do not take this as a negative review of the machine or dealer. This was not intended as such and I did not mean to impugn anyone's reputation. The dealer has been good to deal with and gave me a good price. If a moderator could remove the model number from my post it would be welcome. Hopefully the new wireless card will be the answer.

Mark

 

Hey Mark,

Don't worry, I don't think you're stepping on anyone's toes. Btw, for what it's worth, we would actually cover both ways shipping if it were to come back to us under warranty service. I understand the concern though (potential freight damage, data sensitivity, etc.).

And thank you for the kind words!

 

Well it was quite an ordeal but the new card works. My machine came with 2 750gb 5400rpm drives in raid 1. I upgraded to 1TB 700rpm drives in raid 1. By swapping 1 drive at a time I was able to migrate without any reinstallation. Everything was working fine. The card starting dropping out regularly needing to be reset. It started occurring more and more frequently. I reinstalled drivers and the wireless disappeared.

New card comes and is installed. No change even after hours of removing and reinstalling drivers of all revisions. I downloaded drivers from multiple sites to no avail. I put the old card back in with no change. I took my drives out and put the old drives in. The old card started working but dropped out every few minutes. I reinstalled the new card and everything worked fine. Now I am confused.


I reinstalled the new drives and fought drivers for several hours. I finally deleted zone alarm and voila it lives. I reinstalled Zonealarm and it is working fine. So ZA has to be installed after the wireless drivers. What caused the original card to totally disappear rather than drop out every so often was trying to reinstall the drivers with ZA installed. Anyway the new card is working and no drops so far but have only had it installed 3 days so far.