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Theodoric · 19-05-2005, 19:54

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.

19-05-2005, 19:54	#1
Theodoric Inactive Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: London Posts: 2,974	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.