Am I lucky, or what?
 

I came home on Tuesday evening, the 17 May and found that our Dell PC was completely dead; no lights, no sound, not a dicky bird. I checked the cable and found it was OK. On plus side, we have a 3 year warranty, but on the minus side we bought the PC exactly 3 years ago in mid May 2002. So, I phoned Dell as quickly as possible and after the usual performance of being put through the hoops carrying out umpteen tests, it was agreed that an engineer needed to be sent out. I checked afterwards and found that our 3 years ran out on the 20 May 2005, that is a bare 3 days after a major hardware failure. Is this a record for close shaves?

The engineer turned up today and sorted it out. It was an interesting demonstration of the relative costs of a trained person's time and the cost of hardware. He didn't even bother to check anything. He just rapidly whipped out the power supply and also the mother board (which somewhat surprised me) and installed new ones. He then made sure that the PC was working. He identified a hardware problem with my TV card, which I had to leave out - fair enough, it is a third party device, not Dell's.

All, in all, I feel extremely fortunate and reckon that I've probably broke even on the cost of the warranty.

Re: Am I lucky, or what?
 

I would now enquire as to the length of warranty on the new mobo and power supply, you should presuming they are new parts have an extra year on those 2 at least :D

Re: Am I lucky, or what?
 

it will only be for the duration of the existing warranty. Just becasue its replaced the clock doesnt get restarted

Re: Am I lucky, or what?
 

Your very very VERY lucky and fortunate to get such a wonderful job done.

Personally I normally replace my systems after about one and a half years. Find it better, and what with the incoming new technogies by that time I find I am laggin behind as I never buy the latest most powerful systems.

My current one I am planning on replacing in about January 2006.

Re: Am I lucky, or what?
 

Just because your manufacturers warranty has expired doesn't mean that you can't get repairs done free of charge. It's always wise to try both the manufacturer and seller to see what they will do for you.

I have had two repairs done to my oven which had a one year labour and five year parts warranty done without charge for labour more than a year after purchase. The second time was four and a half years after purchase.

I had a TV bought from Asda develop a fault 15 months after purchase. It was bought with a 12 month warranty. They not only replaced it with a brand new TV with a new full three year warranty on it but refunded me over £50 being the difference in price of the new TV and what we paid for the previous one.

Re: Am I lucky, or what?
 

I got my money's worth with my packard bell waranty... i only had the standard one year one it came with.. but in that time i had the following replacements done free...:

1x 56k modem
3x Motherboards
1x 256mb DDR stick
2x CPU's (P4 2.2ghz Northwood)
1x Graphics card (gf4 mx 440)

Overall shows that PB had lots of dodgey parts... but since my warranty ran out... NONE of the parts died, and are still working, they're mostly used in a pc i made for my mum...

Re: Am I lucky, or what?
 

Makes me sick how lucky people can be :(

Things that happened to me in the last 24 hours:

1. My server blew up last night. Power supply was sparking and burning so that's borked!
2. Exhaust snapped on car today, had to have that replaced (to the tune of over £100!).
3. Managed to lock myself out of my account at work, so had to call the helpdesk to have my account unlocked. The reason? I was trying to log in using my password from home :dunce:

Re: Am I lucky, or what?
 

that would depend on the warranty , i had an asda tv replaced and got another years g'tee :)