[DUG] [Off Topic]Warranty expired

[Jolyon Smith]

David, unless I'm mistaken, once you are outside the 12 months standard
warranty period it's not a question of taking the product as a whole, but
rather considering what in particular has gone wrong.

The LCD screen in a monitor might be expected to last well beyond 4 years
(though it depends on how often it is used - 10,000 hours I think is the
typical rating, which could easily be used up in 4 years, for example -
being less than 7 hours a day x 365 per year).

But the mains transformer powering that screen is a very different
component and it's life might have been adversely affected by a "dirty"
power supply, other faulty equipment on the same mains circuit, adverse
supply events (power spikes) etc etc that could easily explain a life of
only 4 years.

Dell might be generous and simply take ownership of the problem, but I
think they would be equally entitled to point out these things and say they
can't be held responsible (unless you are willing and able to prove that
you have had a perfectly clean supply for 4 years and have not suffered
spikes or used any other faulty equipment etc etc).


I had a Logitech Harmony remote control that started misbehaving.  It was
2-3 years old and after a time of being very fussy about where it was
placed on the base station in order to re-charge (I had to "jiggle" it to
get a positive contact) it eventually stopped charging completely.  I
tracked the problem down to the springs on the charging contacts - they had
weakened such that the contact made with the remote was not very good,
which in turn had lead to corrosion of the contacts themselves, ultimately
to the point where they were no longer making any useful contact with the
remote at all.

Clearly this was a design fault with the contacts and/or the springs used
which should have lasted far more than 2-3 years of very ordinary use.
 Logitech accepted this and replaced the remote with a brand new one at no
charge.

I'm not sure they would have done anything had it merely been a faulty
transformer.  At the very least I think they would have asked me to pay for
a replacement, and that arguably would have been reasonable.  But when the
fault is a clear design or manufacturing problem, they can't duck their
responsibility so easily.

+0.02 x 2  :)
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