The Price You Pay For a Laptop Warranty
by: John Roth on Sat, 9 May 2009 at: 2:57 PM Go to: Previous Article Next Article
After doing extensive research on refurbished laptop warranties, it became clear there was a great deal of lying by major distributors of laptops.
Lets go over a warranty from a laptop I purchased last week. In the warranty the manufacture claims that the laptop is free from defects in workmanship for a period of 12 months. But goes on to say in the same paragraph that the warranty does not include failure caused by improper operation or normal wear and tear; does this mean that my teenager, who is a known abuser of the T.V., car, and stereo, who is very hard on the computer keypad will absolve the warranty?
My friend told me I was getting off light with only a 15% restocking fee, since some distributors charge 20% (or even 25%) for trying to do business with these pirates!
Now, some businesses buy or lease large qualities of laptops at discounts, and after a two or three years they resell the laptops back to the manufacture, so they can recover some of their original investment principal. The laptops that make it through the quality control department are re-tested and brought back to the original design specifications to be resold to the consumer.
Its estimated that people who return their laptop (within 30 days) after purchase only account for 4 percent of the over-all refurbished market. The other 96 percent of refurbished laptops re-sold are between two and three years old, which the standard and extended manufactures warranties have expired.
The people who have purchased refurbished laptops are very happy with the over-all condition of the refurbished laptop, and are very happy the significant cost savings over a brand new laptop.
The laptop was created so you take your computer with you"wherever you decided to go to. The warranty sounds contradictory to the design goal of building and manufacturing a laptop.
Lets take a look. The price of the laptop was $290 dollars; they then charged a restocking fee of 15%, which brought the value down to $246.50 dollars. But you lost $110 in additional shipping costs to ship the laptop to you, and you spent another $110 dollars to ship the computer back to the distributor.
Its also very sad to see laptop distributors lying or bending the truth concerning warranties on refurbished computers. Most often I will notice a statement on their webpage that their refurbished computers come with a 30 day or 60 day limited manufacturers warranty"if in fact if you speak directly to the manufacture, they will quickly point out the manufacturers warranty has expired on a majority of the laptop series for a specific model.
What about warranties for citizens of foreign countries? Basically, you get no warranty of any kind if you buy the laptop in the U.S and have the computer shipped to a foreign country.
In addition, only 45 percent of distributors offer a parts and labor warranty outside of the manufactures warranty"and the majority of these warranties are for 30 days. How sad.
The first thing you need to consider; you dont want your lemon sent back you, once your laptop has been worked on. You want a new laptop (based on 100% of the original purchase price), and start fresh. Two, you dont want to pay for any return shipping charges to have the laptop fixed, which should have been in working order in the first place. So buy a laptop with an exceptional warranty, so you can enjoy your laptop"worry free.
Sincerely, John Roth
About the Author
Before you buy a laptop online, please go to: laptop
Article Source: The -One Article Directory-
Print View Total views: 7 Word Count: 599 - 0 comments
