Laptop Warranty Repair

[thisguyinoc]

What is the name of your state?
California

I purchased a Compaq laptop from Circuit City about 2 years ago, along with the extended warranty from Circuit City, as opposed to from the manufacturer Compaq. Last month the CD Writer went bad, so I sent it in to be fixed, within a week they returned it via DHL with a brand new CD-ROM drive in it, but now the screen is damaged. It looked like something was spilled on the screen or something. I immediately called Circuit City's warranty hotline and complained and they said to send it back and they would take care of it. The have now had my laptop for over a month and only tell me that the status of the repair is that the parts have been ordered, which has had that status for over a week now. Their repair service seems to be done by an outside business that contracts the work, so they do not know exactly what is going on with the repair. Everytime I call to find out what is going on with the repair, they cannot give me a definitive answer and say to call back in a few days. The brochure for the warranty states that most repairs are done in 5-7 days. What are my options? Are there any legal means I could/should take?

Thank you,
Bryan

 

[Halobear]

I'm by no means versed in the law or anything, I can only tell you what will probably happen. I had the same situation happen with a Compaq I bought for my husband from Best Buy in May 2003. He had the computer for less than 3 months. One day he came home from work, fired up the computer and...nothing. I looked over my papers and saw that there was a 1 year warranty from Best Buy on it, and a 2 year warranty from Compaq. I figured, cool, this'll be handled quickly with 2 warranties on it! If Best Buy can't fix it, Compaq will...

After going through a lot of what you're going through (the parts aren't in stock, we have to wait for them, the damage can't be fixed by Best Buy or else it will void your Compaq warranty, we had to send it to Compaq). Then after Compaq got it, we got the whole "part not in stock" runaround again. Total time my husband's computer was gone: 2 months, 3 weeks. I still don't like to recommend this to anyone, but as for myself, if anything ever happens to his computer again, I will either take it to the local computer store and risk voiding the warranty, or I will do what I did when my old computer went out: Buy him a Dell! I have nothing but praise for the Dell service department, which I will not get into here because that's not the issue.

So back to your post, right now they pretty well have you where they want you. They have your computer, it's still under warranty I assume so it's free work? And they know that all they have to do is give you little clip answers and dodge you when you call. It's very irritating and frustrating. If anything could have been done at the time, I wish I knew what it was! Their philosophy is, they have your computer. What are you going to do if they keep it for months? NOTHING. It's not like you're going to tell them to keep it and stick it sideways, you've already paid for it. The sorry fact is, they have your merchandise and know you will wait for it. And they'll make you.