In January I bought an Amilo Pa1510 laptop to replace an ageing IBM Thinkpad T30 - a move that was a mistake in any case as the Thinkpad was the better machine...
After about six months the DVD drive started to fall out of the laptop. As it always worked fine when slotted back in I wasn't too worried. Soon after that I switched to a Macbook Pro anyway and the Amilo became my wife's laptop. As she didn't use the CD drive it wasn't a problem - until December when I was away and the drive now doesn't work at all.
Straight after that we moved house, and I finally contacted the Fujitsu help desk on January 22nd, which turned out to be two days after the one year 'limited warranty' expired. The 'customer service' man on the phone told me I would have to write in. Which I duly did. On the 3rd of March I received a reply to my letter of the 24th of January. Here is the salient part of the reply from Sue Young on their 'help' desk: I do occasionally hear from customers who like yourself are outside the warranty period - be it a day, a week a month or even longer - and have experienced a failure that they would like us to fix free of charge. We would dearly like to assist these customers as we are no unsympathetic (sic) but as a business we have to question the practicality of this.
They may not be unsympathetic, but they are bloody useless. The laptop failed in a serious way inside the warranty period, but I reported it two days late and they refuse to honour the warranty. I wrote another letter surprised that they didn't feel a moral obligation to repair their failed laptop and reminding them of the UK consumer law. It ended: As I'm sure you can understand, for an item that cost so much I can't let Fujitsu get away without living up to its obligations. I will be eagerly awaiting your response and documenting this conversation on my blog. I have to say that so far I am disappointed with the level of 'customer service' offered and couldn't recommend in good faith anyone purchasing a Fujitsu Siemens laptop if this apparently simple problem can't be resolved.
Under UK consumer law good sold have to be fit for purpose for a reasonable time - and no definition of reasonable time says that reporting a problem two days *after* the warranty fails makes it 'unreasonable'. Fortunately I have the small claims court to back me up.
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