I purchased at $3k laptop from Fry's and foolishly purchased the $650 "Performance Guarantee" Extended Warranty. The unit has been meticulously cared for and is in very good condition.
I took the laptop in for repair at the end of the warranty period because diskettes written with the floppy drive can't be read on other computers. Also, the laptop won't charge the battery. (Since it won't even charge new batteries it is likely an internal battery charger problem).
Fry's refused to look at it unless I paid them a $90 diagnostic fee.in addition, they did not want to honor the extended
warranty. Here is what they claimed:
First they insisted that the warranty was no longer valid
because there was a gap in the case seam which "must have
been caused by abuse". (I removed the floppy drive and
tightened two loose screws which fixed that problem).
Then they insisted that because two cosmetic 'covers' over
the hinges were missing the unit must have been abused.
(The LCD hinge screws also tend to work loose which
eventually breaks the little covers, which are cosmetic only)
Then they ran a read-write diagnostic on the floppy and
declared it perfectly functional. They refused to try
to write a disk and try reading it in another machine.
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Lastly they insisted that the battery must be dead and that batteries are not covered under the warranty. (Even though they replaced one for me at 6 months, and agreed to replace another at 18 months, but were out of stock at the time).
They referenced item 3e of the Terms and Conditions which
excludes:
"Consumables including, but not limited to, toner
cartridges, drums, printer ribbons, and ink cartridges"
Since they were actively selling laptops when I bought this laptop, if they meant not to include batteries, they would have included 'batteries' in the exclusion, not just printer consumables.
Through all of this the service personnel and service manager were extremely unpleasant and insulting, not to mention ignorant. I discussed the situation with the assistant store manager, and then the Corporate Customer Relations person but they were insistant that it is company policy that you have to pay a diagnostic fee, even when the unit is covered under an extended warranty. There is no reference anywhere in the
Extended Warranty Terms & Conditions to such a charge.
All I wanted was for them to fix my floppy and the charging circuitry, or alternately exercise the clause in the Terms & Conditions where they replace the unit with 'like kind or quality'. Heck, I'd probably even kick in some more money to get a nice new more powerful machine...
I highly recommend avoiding Fry's and Fry's Extended Warranty since they appear to be willing to use any excuse, reasonable or not, to avoid fixing the unit under warranty.
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