See companies like Samsung and Toshiba have "certified" stores that "take guarantees" but they are not tied by their parent company, they are privately owned stores that just negotiated with the parent company to use their "sticker".
I bought a Phillips shaver and under warranty, the Phillips station wanted me to pay 70% of the cost of a new one, despite being a DoA device.
So while the sticker works as it should in the US and Europe, South America has a god damn wild west scenario. Anything goes, and if you don't like it, buy something else. Yep.
(Source: I live in Bolivia)
But I guess that on the whole, the good customer experience for the honest customers outweighs the cost of fraud.
You can build any system of service and policies you want as long as you account for it in the price of the product or service. Even if customers take advantage of you.
There is an exercise machine (some kind of wonder machine) that costs (from an ad I saw some time ago) about $17,000. [1] [2]
IIRC they give an iron clad mbg. Might even pay the shipping both ways (and actually so do many high end mattress companies). (Sorry don't have time to fully re-read the links that I am giving.
Bottom line is they are tying those consumer friendly policies into the price of the product. So since the cost of the equipment almost certainly pales in comparison to what they sell it for, even taking into account returns, in theory, they still will earn a profit.
[1] I think this is it but I'm not seeing any price info on the page. http://www.fastexercise.com/
[2] http://blog.cleveland.com/health/2009/03/rom_machine_worth_i...
But that's just a guess, why else would they stop supporting a warranty in Guatemala (at least if their line is true that they actually removed the warranty for this country) other than they'd gotten ripped off there more than their bottom line could handle?
So warranty/guarantee is mostly useless, what the law provides us consumers is already better.
The fact is, Toshiba made a written representation to the customer. They can change their policies, but they shouldn't break those promises in the process.
They were crappy (you order online, there's no place to see them). I hated, but there was a $200 restock fee on a $300+ product, so i just gave it to a relative when i was visiting.
two days in Brazil and the mother board died. I called lenovo, they gave me the number of a local shop. I called the local shop. They arranged to pick it up. I had linux dual boot and some personal data there already, So i gave instructions that the HD would be out of the device. no problem. they missed one or two pickup schedules, but when they finally picked it up they confirmed it was the dead motherboard, replaced, tested, returned. I put the HD back in and all was fine.
lenovo: 10 for warranty, 0 for retail experience and product satisfaction..
And then there are ODMs and OEMs: ODMs provide the designs, OEMs mostly just stuff boards.
It's common to find products of different brands that look almost identical, because the chassis are the same while the bezels are different.
Dell for example is basically just a sales force with a catalog, not much different in principle from CDW.
This is using the s/n in the image: http://bandyt.site44.com/toshiba/garantia2.jpg
Results of the s/n search: (from site: http://support.toshiba.com/warranty)
Model Name: SATELLITE C850D Product Category: Portable Model-Part Number: PSCBQU-00200F Serial Number: YC307409Q Registration Number: 827633 Purchase Date: Nov 26, 2012 Country Purchased: United States Complimentary Phone Support Through: Feb 24, 2013 Warranty: Warranty expired! +++ Warranty Expiration Date: Nov 26, 2013 Primary Service Option: Out of Warranty Service ++ http://toshibarepairservices.com
Regardless, the claim is that Toshiba is refusing to honor the warranty because of the country the laptop is in, not because the warranty is expired.
You entered the wrong serial number. It's YC317409Q.
> Warranty Expiration Date: Feb 24, 2014
It would take a lot more than this to get me to avoid a company as large as Toshiba.
He's not actually putting you in a headlock and saying "YOU BETTER NOT DO THIS, benatkin!". He wrote a blog post.
Don't be so defensive.
The result is that I generally throw out anecdotes like yours, no matter where I hear them (including from immediate family members), and instead read reviews.
In fact I sometimes even throw out my own opinions in favor of something more objective. I was severely wronged by T-mobile, and a year later, signed back up with them, and it's been great.
Make a nice polite blog post with all of your documentation (including your sales receipt) and then send the link to him.
This was about two years ago and unfortunately their excuse for service is ostensibly unchanged, rated as 1.33/5 on one of the larger national rating sites (at the time it was 1.4).
I work at a big company and get sales, marketing, press, and customer inquiries ALL THE TIME, at my PERSONAL email address (which is easier to find than my work address). There is absolutely nothing I can do to help you if you contact me directly because company policy forbids it, official channels exist for a reason.
(Edit: by the way, most recent one was one of these - nice dev machine if you like Linux! http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd )
FWIW, roll with Dell on server front as well, great machines, hope Dell sticks around and doesn't go under.
I got a laptop from Newegg for ~$700-$800 with an i7, nVidia GPU, and Windows license. Installing Linux is easy enough, and dual booting gives you flexibility if you want/need to run apps that refuse to go in Wine.
To be fair, my machine only came with 4GB of RAM and no SSD, but upgrades for those can surely be found for less than the $400-$500 price differential.
And a system with no discrete GPU is crippled if you're a gamer. If I'm paying $1000 plus for a system, you can be sure it'll have a decent GPU.
* Maximum ram upgrade amount (most consumer laptops max out at 8 GB or 16 GB)
* Screen quality (IPS vs TN, glare vs anti-glare, etc)
* Keyboard layout and quality (yes, this matter A LOT if you type all day on the computer)
* Driver compatibility (since Linux is mentioned)
* Weight, roughness (or beat-up factor), portability factors, battery life, modularity, expansion ports... the list goes on.
It's not just "this machine which has a top end Intel i7 CPU and an SSD" for everyone.
That used to be the case. Intel's caught up. Look at the ASUS UX301LA for example. It's extremely thin and light, with 8 hour battery life and a 2560x1440 screen. Those attributes together wouldn't be possible with discrete graphics, yet the Intel Iris integrated GPU that comes with its i7-4558U is more capable than a discrete Radeon Mobility of 2-3 years ago. It can run mid-level games like Diablo/Starcraft at native resolution (which is very high) and high quality easily, and probably anything released in 2014 smoothly if you just chop the resolution in half (1280x720 not being bad at all).
http://support.toshiba.com/warranty http://cdgenp01.csd.toshiba.com/content/support/pdf_files/st... http://cdgenp01.csd.toshiba.com/content/support/pdf_files/st... http://cdgenp01.csd.toshiba.com/content/support/pdf_files/st... http://cdgenp01.csd.toshiba.com/content/support/pdf_files/st... http://cdgenp01.csd.toshiba.com/content/support/pdf_files/st...
That'd be a mistake across warranty docs between 1 and 5 years. Also some other products:
http://cdgenp01.csd.toshiba.com/content/support/pdf_files/st... http://cdgenp01.csd.toshiba.com/content/support/pdf_files/st... http://cdgenp01.csd.toshiba.com/content/support/pdf_files/st...
Seems a little odd though that support would go with an excuse like that. Is there more to the story?
> In 1987, Tocibai Machine, a subsidiary of Toshiba, was accused of illegally selling CNC milling machines used to produce very quiet submarine propellers to the Soviet Union in violation of the CoCom agreement, an international embargo on certain countries to COMECON countries. The Toshiba-Kongsberg scandal involved a subsidiary of Toshiba and the Norwegian company Kongsberg Vaapenfabrikk. The incident strained relations between the United States and Japan, and resulted in the arrest and prosecution of two senior executives, as well as the imposition of sanctions on the company by both countries.[6] Senator John Heinz of Pennsylvania said "What Toshiba and Kongsberg did was ransom the security of the United States for $517 million."
1. Go to the vendor you bought it through
2. Go to your credit card company
3. Look up the consumer protection laws of your country and use them
5. Shame Toshiba into living up to their word.
Use your legal rights, and advertise what you did. If you don't know your rights you'll probably have a bad time.
Hopefully for free. Most states have a lemon law.
I bought a Toshiba laptop previously and accidentally lots of water got leaked into it. (was my mistake)
The system didn't reboot at all. They entirely replaced my RAM and other hardware components free of cost. This happened in India. So I guess the situation varies.
Support says they've passed the matter to "customer service mgmt. Expecting a response on Monday."
These dudes: @ToshibaUSAhelp
My work laptop (supplied by employer) was a Toshiba and had a 1-year warranty. After about 10-11 months of using it, the DVD drive stopped working. Toshiba's warranty support was typical ship-to-depot, so IT pulled the drive and sent the laptop off for repairs. I wouldn't ordinarily care about a laptop our for repair, but IT supplied me with a temporary machine that was at least a generation back (ie: slow and heavy).
IT got a message that except that my machine had been received at the depot but heard nothing else for weeks and weeks after. By the time I'd bugged a tech at my company enough to contact them the warranty had lapsed ... and Toshiba refused to service the machine.
Toshiba refused to service it for several more weeks. I finally took over contacting support from the IT tech, and got the machine serviced after a half-dozen (long hold-time) calls. But for the amount of time the IT dept & me spent getting an optical drive fixed our company could have paid for two new machines.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.2...
However, I have a sneaking suspicion that nobody at Toshiba visits HN.
I had a similar problem with top-end ultrabook from ASUS (13.3" FHD i7 Zenbook Prime with discrete graphics) in 2012.
The ultrabook stopped after 2.5 months (keyboard problem), then after RMA got update that it was a customer induced damage (definitely not, it was an issue many people complained about) requiring replacement of both keyboard and motherboard almost for the price of a new ultrabook. I was really upset and after 6 months of having it in a drawer I sent the ultrabook for an analysis to an independent lab - it turned out only the keyboard module was damaged, motherboard was OK. I ordered a keyboard replacement from asusparts (~$100) and it works till today. Never heard any sorry from ASUS for trying to extract money from me for a "damaged" motherboard.
Having said that, I scratched ASUS off my list for the rest of my life. This happened in Germany. Paradoxically I was just thinking about buying Toshiba Qosmio X70-136 as my DTR but after reading this I will go with some Clevo-based manufacturer like. Thanks!
Years ago I bought Dell's and found paying extra for their onsite service was a wise investment. Only needed it for a single machine but they literally came to our office with parts and repaired it. Until I needed it a second time and found they had changed policies and found onsite was in name only.
So when I started buying Toshiba Qosmio's I actually investigated my service options in Michigan. It has paid dividends because whenever I've had a problem I can get on the phone with the company's owner, they turn it around faster than shipping it to Toshiba's depot and keep me informed every step of the way.
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Ugg. Too bad for them but I wonder what the small claims court would have to say about it. Contract is what's advertised, not what you secretly thought.
...
Assuming there is an equivalent there, of course.
1. Bill Clinton might say - "Well, it depends on your definition of Latin America."
2. You should mail the CEO of Toshiba. In fact, you should give us the contact info for the CEO of Toshiba so we can mail him on your behalf.
