Sony will NOT honour its warranty for HDD upgardes

After some conflicting advise between forum members and sales people, I decided to email sony and ask them if upgrading the HDD on a new sony laptop bought from sonystyle UK would void the warranty. After a while I received this email:

I will not be a sony customer after reading this. They don't even offer SSDs and even if they did I wouldn't opt for their upgrade list if I can do it all myself for much cheaper.

 

Just swap back to the original hdd if you need warranty service??

 

Don't leave any traces that you did opened/modified your laptop. Don't tell Sony.

 

Yep that would be my plan if I had a laptop from them but luckily I managed to dig out this information before I bought a Sony. I can imagine some people that plan on doing this in the UK should keep this in mind, i.e. keep the original hardware and don't tell sony you upgraded!

 

Did you honestly expect anything else? How can they guarantee the laptop once a punter has had his hands in there? Not realistic, I feel. I've never heard of any manufacturer of anything continue their guarantee once the item has been opened by a user.

 

I agree with Quackers... there'd be no way they could warranty parts that were never meant to be user-accessible.

 

I swapped out the hdd on my F series with an ssd on day one and I can tell you straight up theres no sticker or anything over the hdd bay that when broken = void warranty. You can slot in an aftermarket drive and leave no trace that you were ever in there to begin with. Keep the original hard drive somewhere safe and if you need to avail of the warranty at some point, sneak it back in like a ninja. They won't be able to tell.

Edit: Shock! I didn't think of invisible ink!

 

Or Smart Water!

Like a Ninja, lol

 

Does the VPCEB2X5E model require you to "crack the case" to get to the hard drive or does it have an HDD access door like the FZ models? If you have to crack the case, of course they will not warranty the machine and why should they? That would be an unreasonable expectation. If you plan to swap hard drives in the future, you need to be sure to buy a machine with a drive access door.

Gary

 

I have to disagree with everyone who says that no manufacturer should honour the warranty once the product has been upgraded. I know that Dell will be ok with you replacing the HDD as long as you let them know you will be doing it and purchase it from their website (still too much hassle). Also, have you seen Crucial's and other companies' ads encouraging you to upgrade your computers? If a laptop has an easy to access RAM/HDD bay, why not allow for an upgrade.

These days SATA drives and RAM are as easy to upgrade as PCMCIA cards (+ a few screws).

I know that Sony won't change their ways (even though SSD upgrades are getting more popular by the day) so I started this thread in hope of finding a fairer deal
http://forum.notebookreview.com/wha...radable-notebooks-dual-drive-bay-13-15-a.html

 

That is their standard line i would expect from Sony. You should accept it also. However, several people have sent their laptops to Sony EU with upgrades and Sony did nothing about it so turned a blind eye to it and upgraded their laptops. This happened to myself and they even advocated that i do my own repair for a laptop in warranty.

The warranty terms clearly makes their official position clear.
http://support.sony-europe.com/repair/warranty/pdf/warranty_en_GB.pdf

 

I don't know about the UK, but here in the US, tie-ins to warranties are expressly prohibited, i.e. a manufacturer can't claim the warranty is void if you have used 3rd party parts or services -- to do so, they have to prove that the parts or services you used damaged the goods. They can only claim that the part you replaced is no longer covered under warranty (obviously).

This part of the Magnusson-Moss act was specifically targeted at car manufacturers, who would do such things as claim the warranty was void because the user had changed their air filter or tires to a better brand, but it has been upheld for other goods too, including hard drive replacements.
So I would double-check that the UK doesn't have similar laws, which would trump whatever support in Bangalore claims.

 

I have upgraded the hdd on 20+ notebooks and a few were sony`s and returned them later because of an unrelated fault, and i have never had any comebacks, just keep the original hdd in case you need to return the notebook.

 

You never answered the question. Does your model have an access door for the hard drive, or does it require you to crack the case open. No manufacturer will warrant a machine that has had the case cracked, nor should they. Sony has no issues with folks swapping hard drives on models that have a drive access door. Nor does it have any issue with memory upgrades on models DESIGNED FOR USER ACCESS.

Gary

 

Why would you crack anything?

Sufficiently skilled person can replace and return the original drive "just in case" without any marks.

I've never seen any warranty seals on my Sony equipment - and I used to have Z1, TX, TZ, VGN-Z and VPC-Z ;-) If they would be serious about prohibiting anyone from opening the laptop without voiding the warranty, they would stick those warranty-void seals.

I guess in civilized places there are laws preventing that.

Unless there is something obviously broken / burned etc... there should be no problems.

 

Crack as in open the two halves of the laptop case. And if there is any sign you have done so, no manufacturer will warrant the machine. I have seen "sufficiently skilled" authorized techs leave tell tale marks on the case when doing this.

Gary

 

If you can't open a notebook without scratching it up and breaking things...then you shouldn't be opening it...let alone expecting sony to warrant it.

 

I've opened my notebook at least 5 times without leaving any trace. Just check out disassemble docs/videos, use the proper tools (the right screw driver type and size), take your time and think about what are you doing before you are doing it.
Don't do anything with force, if something does not go easily then you are doing something wrong!

 

My laptop came back from Sony Repair with the webcam not working. Which is quite something considering it went in for new hard drives. It also had quite a deep scratch on the lid, that wasn't there before. If trained techs can make mistakes, so can a user (even a careful one).

 

Physical damage should no happen, then the technician is not trained or bad work environment. And if something gets damaged during repair it should be replaced.