My wife and I bought two Toshiba A25-S208 notebook computers from Office Depot during a business trip to Virginia. We have businesses in Fiji and tend to travel a lot.international warranty was our biggest concern so we asked a lot of questions about the international warranty to make sure we could get service under warranty whether we were in Europe, Canada, Fiji, Australia, or New Zealand or anywhere in America.
We were constantly assured that the warranty was an international warranty and that coverage was available almost anywhere. We were told that we could purchase additional protection any time before the end of the warranty period.
Near the expirey of the warranty period I called from Fiji where we were spending most of our time over the last year and for the next two or three. I asked if the additional warranty coverage was an international warranty. I was told "all Toshiba warranties are international warranties". Due to time zone differences they could not sell me a warranty that night.
My wife called the next day to order the warranty coverage and again asked if the coverage was good in Fiji. She was told that it was. I took over and completed the transaction and paid for the coverage for which I received an email confirming the coverage. A couple weeks later the power supply died and I started calling to get coverage.
It took three days of constant calling at $2.00 a minute long distance charges to the US to finally be told I'd have to get help from the Australian office for Toshiba. I spent two more days trying to call Toshiba and finally got someone who was willing to help me. She could not answer my questions about where and how I'd get help but said she'd call me back. She emailed me with a note saying that my coverage is only local to the US. I called the US again and told that office the story about how we were assured it was an international warranty and asked why it was misrepresented to me.
I was told that I must have been mistaken — that additional coverage is only local and that I was out of luck. I asked if I could ship the power supply to them in the US and was told that I could not. I was told that it had to be shipped from a US address and they would send the box to ship it to them only to a US address and that if they received the defective one more than 15 days after the exchange was initiated that I'd be charged for the replacement unit.
I explained that if the box was shipped to the US address that would take a few days, then the box would have to be shipped to Fiji which would take about two weeks or cost $120.00 to FEDEX it which was more than a new power supply would cost. Then it would take another couple weeks to ship it back to them in San Diego. She told me that it would probably be best just to buy a new one.
I was lied to about the warranty — probably just to sell warranty protection. Then I spent a lot of money on phone charges to find out something they should have told me from the beginning. The reason it took so long and so many phone calls to follow up on is that I was given conflicting information about how to use the international warranty. It took almost 5 days to find out I was lied to about the warranty protection. I've spent a couple hundred dollars in phone calls which could have been spend on a new adapter instead of on Toshiba bullshit.
I had less trouble when I had to get my Sony Vaio serviced in Fiji. At least they let me ship it to their San Diego office and they shipped the unit to me in Fiji. What is strange is that Sony's warranty is only local to the US and they provide better service than Toshiba who pretends to provide international service.
Don't deal with these guys especially if you are buying a notebook to travel with. They are the worst, most uninformed, computer company I've ever dealt with.in the last 18 years I've purchased over 5 million dollars worth of computer equipment for my business interests and dealt with all kinds of warranty problems. Their warranty service is possibly a worse scam than Fry's Electronics who has the most bogus extended warranty protection I've ever heard of.
Douglas
Lincoln, California
U.S.A.
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