[mymnarorump]

Hey guys,

Right this is the tablet (laptop) of a friend of mine. It's a Dell Latitude XT with touchscreen and the whole shebang. On paper a real sweet deal when I helped her with selecting it, bought it from a company called ndc.co.uk as a refurb.
Few months after receiving it some minor issues appeared; touch screen wasn't always working. Then I found out the laptop's infamous reputation (touch screen drivers were buggy, supposed to get an update, never got it) so I left it at that.

After a while I advised her to get a Broadcom Crystal HD chip for it, because of the underpowered cpu, which couldn't playback some h264 content fluently.
For that I had to break the warranty seal, which was placed right over the part where the wireless network adapter and WWAN slot were (for the crystal chip).

Shortly after the harddrive started failing (which is located under the battery, not with a warranty sticker or something). Didn't turn on some of the time, ticking, etc. problem is that it's a 1.8inch drive, which are quite expensive.
Touchscreen completely stopped working too before the harddrive got so bad windows wouldn't always startup.

So I mailed them, they asked me to send the laptop to them, then I mailed back and confessed I'd broken the seal, but was wondering if I could send in just the harddrive. Sure they said, as long as I'd be willing to pay if it turned out to be fine. I decided to send in the complete laptop after all because of the touchscreen issues

Anyway didn't hear from them for a long time, so I mailed them, they said they had already mailed me the 6th (which they hadn't) and that the "item wasn't under warranty because of the broken seal"

Now I was wandering where I stand in this. I'll give them a call tomorrow, and need some guidelines.
Because of some details I think give me some "rights":

1. The area below the sticker had no direct relation to any of the parts showing problems, while this laptop is known to have these exact problems
2. The location of the sticker rendered me unable to install any upgrades in my laptop, I haven't seen this on any official Dell laptop so far
3. The harddrive had nothing to do with the warranty sticker, and they gave me permission to send in just the harddrive, should at least give me partial coverage of the cost right?

What do you think about these arguments? Should I bring them up or not?

The "we already mailed you" bit gave it a bit of a nasty aftertaste for me, and I got a little scared they'd be billing for everything. When I shipped the laptop I shipped a letter with it describing the problems, the communication with their support department, and email address they could contact me at (no typo's, made a scan)

Any help is appreciated!

[Pwy9egVW]

you're ****ed [yes]

[TessUnsonia]

Sorry to say, as soon as the warranty sticker is broken they don't have to do anything. They can just claim any faults are down to you and wash their hands of the whole thing.

[Adeniinteme]

2. The location of the sticker rendered me unable to install any upgrades in my laptop, I haven't seen this on any official Dell laptop so far

Maybe not but it's a fairly common practice on laptops to seal the case. The only time I've ever gotten away with this is when the manufacturer expressly asked me to open the case and reseat something.

[mymnarorump]

Sorry to say, as soon as the warranty sticker is broken they don't have to do anything. They can just claim any faults are down to you and wash their hands of the whole thing.

Alright yeah was afraid so.

I'll just ask them to just replace the harddrive and see whether that solves all other problems aswell. Just hope for the best.

Thanks.

[2swasseneons]

I added memory to my MSI netbook which I had to remove the warranty seal to do so. I was worried about losing the warranty, but checked their website before hand and someone at MSI advised that as long as the upgrade is carried out in a "professional manner" i.e. not scratched anything or causing visable physical damage to any components then breaking the warranty seal will not violate the warranty.

[Hofonom]

Well you can always be a bit dishonest and buy a new sticker.

[Adeniinteme]

Well you can always be a bit dishonest and buy a new sticker.

Yeah, why not use one of these...

[mymnarorump]

Yeah, why not use one of these...

Ehehe well it's probably no good because they already have my laptop

But I'll send one to them anyways

[Pwy9egVW]

Yeah, why not use one of these...

whoooa ! where can I get those from