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Comment by znpy | Hacker News Reader

Warranty is expensive to manufacturers and they try and make everything not to fix your stuff.

This is why you should buy from brands that are known for good warranty: I had an awesome experience with Lenovo for my ThinkPad and terrible experience with Dell (they literally refused to fix my laptop, just a year old, because it was second hand and I didn't have the original buying receipt -- though the laptop still had its service tag and more than a year of warranty).

Next time, buy a Lenovo tablet.

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>Next time, buy a Lenovo tablet

This is why you shouldn't trust anecdotes.

I had the opposite experience. I had a problem with a Dell laptop a few years back and they didn't ask me to ship it back, they sent a tech out with a part to my home! Same week! Nothing beats having the tech fix it and test it and make sure it's working right there.

Lenovo, on the other hand, had 2 week shipping turnarounds and had me waiting for over a month before saying "we can't do anything except put in a new motherboard at your expense", putting me out of a device for 6 total weeks between shipping, waiting and shipping. My local computer repair shop had me fixed in a two day turnaround

I'll never buy Lenovo again, absolutely never.

I had a similar experience with Lenovo. I was unable to use my device for nearly six months, during which I went through about four returns. They kept sending my laptop back broken! They sent it with a range of issues - initially, they failed to fix the intermittent display flickering, afterwards, it came back with a keyboard containing dead keys, dead LED indicator lights, and missing screws. In the end, I called and told them they were going to pay me for the laptop and we'd part ways.

I will never buy Lenovo again.

I have amazing small/medium business support from Dell on my monitors. If I see a dead pixel, slight backlight fade, or any other issue, I can call Dell and have a new monitor sent overnight to my door.

I bought a Dell monitor from Amazon. It had a defect in the coating, and Dell wouldn't honor the warranty without a dell order number. you can imagine how this turns out. I bought a different brand monitor.

Out of curiosity, was it a Thinkpad, or some other Lenovo? I've had a fantastic experience (though I did shell out the $100 up front for 3 years of NBD On-site support)

I had a same day repair warranty on my work ThinkPad. The LCD had a known ghosting issue. I called to get the panel swapped, and not only did I get another panel with ghosting, the tech was unable to reassemble the display bezel and left with my system in pieces. I had my company send me a Mac the next mothing. I've had a MacBook Air display replaced at the Apple Store. Took 2 hours, and the machine looked as good as new.

Why do you start by pointing out that your comment and the parent's comment are both merely anecdotes, then conclude by saying you'll never buy Lenovo again?

Because their anecdote is personal to them, and affects their decisions.

They can both be affected thereby and able to point out other people shouldn't take their experience as universal at the same time.

Similarly, I've always had a wonderful experience with thinkpads but I don't believe the people who've had bad experiences should necessarily buy another one.

> Because their anecdote is personal to them, and affects their decisions.

That's just rephrasing my question. I asked why it affects their decision.

You seem to be implying that it is sensible to operate on your own anecdotal experiences as if they carry statistical significance, but that it is not sensible to do the same with other people's anecdotal experiences.

But the reason anecdotal evidence ought not be treated as statistically significant data isn't that the anecdotes may be lies or mistaken memories. The reason is that anecdotal evidence by definition was not gathered systematically and therefore may not represent the entire set of data.

Had a similar experience with a Dell laptop that I literally bought out of a dude's trunk in a parking lot. This was around 2010. They sent out a repair person to replace the motherboard in my Latitude D830 that I paid $250 for second-hand. They had previously replaced the 1920x1200 LCD due to 2 dead pixels. I got seriously lucky with this laptop and it made me a loyal Dell customer for personal laptops.

Edit: maybe it was more like 2008/9. I just remember what job I had then and that it had the expensive extended warranty for 3 or 4 years, and it was about a month and a half from expiring (I looked it up by the service tag).

In both companies consumer support is much different than business support. Dell Inspiron support is shit. Dell Latitude support is great. The same for HP, Lenovo, Asus, etc. The exception is Apple where consumer and business lines of support are the same.

For what it's worth, I've had good results from both consumer and business Dell service; and I can't think of any really negative results. I once had a tech support call that went badly, but I think it was just at the limits of what their server people knew, and not really them not making a good faith effort to support their customer.

It's been a while, though, since I've had any Inspiron or Latitude devices worked on, so it may not be the case today. I did just buy a new Inspiron gaming laptop, however, on the strength of my positive past experience (and excellent price for a 4k lappy with great GPU). It replaced a consumer HP Envy, which is the single worst computer I think I've ever owned. I hope I don't have to test the warranty service on my new Inspiron.

>Next time, buy a Lenovo tablet.

After they got caught bundling malware twice, I'm never buying Lenovo again.

"Next time, buy a Lenovo tablet."

I would be cautious with that too.

1. http://money.cnn.com/2015/02/19/technology/security/lenovo-s... 2. http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/now-three-pre-installed-malware...

I had a different experience with Dell - bought a second hand workstation from Dell and 2 weeks before it was 3 years old asked them on chat how to get a new restore DVD - they mailed it express the same day. They just asked for the service tag, then they offered any help I needed.

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