Comment by lucb1e | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lucb1e | Hacker News Reader

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> Generally awful reviews of the company in the other comments here. Probably a deal breaker.

There are also good reviews in the thread. I'm sure we can find similar reviews about any other random laptop brand, except that there you pay the Microsoft tax and they aren't merely showing little love for techies' issues but instead never even heard of the word Linux and require that you reproduce issues on "a normal system like Windows" before they accept it could be their hardware that's faulty.

I don't have experience with Tuxedo Computers, but this is Germany. The EU warranty and 'remote purchase' laws ("koop op afstand", not sure how to translate) are quite excellent (even if the Dutch are better). It might be a headache to get issues fixed depending on how stubborn they are, but rotten apple stories about support is not something I'd generally reject European hardware for.

(I once had a drone from a company that was beyond stubborn, and while I wouldn't wish that experience upon anyone, I learned a lesson or two and now feel a lot more confident in dealing with companies unresponsive to warranty claims: they really don't have many options when you send them registered snailmail stating your claim and subsequent steps if they don't fulfill or refute the claim. If someone had told me to start doing that earlier instead of trusting promises to fix it or call me back or whatever, I'd have saved a lot of time, but I eventually realized how the game was to be played.)

> The EU warranty and 'remote purchase' laws [...] are quite excellent

There is a large difference between buying as a consumer and business/freelancer, though. If the laptop is outright terrible, but not technically _broken_, then there's not much you can do but eat the cost. Even selling it on eBay becomes complicated because now you have to follow EU law if a consumer buys it.

Written on a MacBook that I wish I could have returned...

Yeah, when you buy it for your work without paying taxes on it, you also don't get the consumer benefits. At least that's how it works in NL: if you buy it as a work necessity, you don't pay BTW/VAT/GST on it, but then you indeed don't get the 14 day "I changed my mind" period and I don't know how it works with the standard 2-year warranty.

In general though...

> If the laptop is outright terrible, but not technically _broken_

Then it depends on whether it is as advertised or, if a certain feature was not specified, as one may reasonably expect. In an extreme example, a washing machine that turns out to play annoying music while running is not as one should expect; or if it was advertised that it would play music but it doesn't... Finally, it depends on whether you talked to the merchant. Anything they said can be seen as "as advertised", though of course anything not in writing would be hard to prove.

So it depends on what you mean by "terrible". It sounds to me like you mean something worse than some annoyances or that it's a good laptop but doesn't fit your purpose (assuming that that the merchant did not claim it would do well for your purpose, if you explained your use case to them). You might have a case there, if you tell them as soon as you become aware of the defect(s).

Of course, there are also merchants that are simply nice and will let you exchange it for a product of similar value. I had that with my most recent laptop: in hindsight, I should just not have let the 14 days expire and I should have returned it without strings attached. (It was good hardware and I told myself that, with enough time and customization, I'd be able to work on Windows again since the Linux drivers didn't work at all. But after 3.5 weeks I was absolutely done with Windows.) I asked the merchant and they let me exchange it, but their laptop selection was limited (as with any store), and while I now got something I'm not perfectly happy with, it's still a lot better than the thing I initially had.

> ("koop op afstand", not sure how to translate)

buy remotely :)

Right, that's the literal translation, but is that the legal term for a purchase done over the phone or internet like it is in Dutch?

Edit: Via nl.wikipedia "wet koop op afstand" -> refers to the European law this implements -> https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/NL/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A... -> English -> it's called a "distance contract". Not quite as descriptive as the Dutch term for it, not sure that's going to be very useful in common conversation.

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