Manufacturer Warranties and Protection Plans

[rspetersen]

I took my computer into BestBuy last week because the keyboard keys keep coming off (so far it's "backspace," "control," and "function"). I was told it would take four weeks to fix this. That is just insane to me. Even more so since I spent $300 for insurance.

The reason I spent that much on insurance is so that I would have a working computer no matter what. What good has this insurance done me?

I admit I am angry. I thought I did every thing possible to make sure any and every problem would be addressed in a timely fashion.

So I am stuck. Four weeks without my computer is just not an option. Therefore, for the moment I am typing" on the rubber nodes for each specific key that is missing.

I am aware that the new keyboard would have cost $700 had I not had insurance. So what? I will lose close to that if I don't have my computer for four weeks.

Is this common?

[Sunny]

How do you come up with $700 for a new keyboard? It should be around $30 bucks, even for laptops.

About how long it takes Best Buy to replace it, you need to wait for an answer from a Best Buy employee, I have no knowledge about that.

[rspetersen]

The $700 figure came from the GeekSquad guy I talked to when I brought  my laptop back to Best Buy to get it fixed; however, it didn't occur to me until after I started this thread that I only paid $600 for the entire computer. (I didn't leave my computer--I can't afford to have it gone for four weeks.)

[Sassums]

It cost close to $400 for a new keyboard on a Sony I sent in for repair, and it was gone for 2-3 weeks.  It depends on where it is getting sent, if it is within the first year of purchase, I believe it gets sent to the manufacture, which might explain why it is taking longer than normal.

Had you not purchased the service plan, you would have then had to call the manufacture, dealt with customer support for a few hours and then sent it to them, which probably would have taken longer.  While it probably wasn't what you were looking for with service, it is better than dealing with the manufacture.

$30 to get a new keyboard?  I doubt that, and if you did find one, and installed it, you would void the warranty on the computer, and Best buy would no longer have to cover the keyboard if it were to fail again in the future, due to the fact that the parts were no longer factory parts, and you are probably not a certified technician.

The GeekSquad should be able to tell you why it might be taking so long.

[CApollo]

If you have a warrenty with Dell they'll send you the replacement part within three days.  You can replace it yourself and send back the faulty part--all at their expense.  I had to take out the keyboard to replace my faulty RAM (it took 30-45 minutes for me to figure out how to do this and complete it, btw), so I don't doubt I could replace the keyboard if need be, or find a friend or repair place that would do it for me cheap.  It really wouldn't be hard for Best Buy to certify at least one employee to do simple repairs like this.  If the average customer can have parts rush delivered to them from the manufacturer, than surely Best Buy could as well.  Then they could sell a warrenty that would basically include simple repairs done in-store and they'd order the part from the manufacturer for you, get it in a few days and have their one or two people who are certified replace the part.  It could reduce a lot of traffic to service centers and simple repairs would hopefully be done within one week or less.  Another benefit to this would be the availability of simple, low-cost repair work for people who have such warrenties directly with the manufacturer but have no interest in replacing a keyboard or RAM themselves.

[Sassums]

It depends on how old the computer is....if it is within the 1 year manufactures warranty, then it is sent out to the manufacture, if it is outside of that time frame, then it is sent to a Best Buy service center (to my knowledge anyway)

While it's cool that Dell will send you the parts to replace yourself, I'd rather have someone else do it than waste my own time installing them, removing, them etc, and if I mess something up, then I am to blame, where as if say Best Buy were to mess something up, well then they are liable.  I like that fail safe

[CApollo]

In theory that's nice, but...

1) There are often occasions when Best Buy will damage a computer in their care or fail to do proper services and not take responsibility for it.  I've heard of this happening far too often.  It usually goes something like this:  "Uh, that large crack in your laptop casing?  Yeah, that was there when you brought it in."

2) There are often cases where a service center is 'waiting on a part' for weeks and obviously it is possible to get these parts from Sony, Dell, or whoever in a very short amount of time.  There should never be a period of WEEKS that a repair is delayed because of an undelivered part in this day and age.  If you're in the business of repairing computers from many manufacturers, you should position yourself to have parts available to you within a short window of time.  Dell could ship a new keyboard in three days to a customer and they could learn to install it themselves within one additional day if they wish.  Why would it take the professionals at a Best Buy service center 2-3 weeks to do the same?  It shouldn't.  That's business common sense.  If they're so backed up they can't possibly get to it any faster than that, then they need more service centers or they need have some sort of training certification for simple repairs in-store.  If the issue is getting parts, they need to deal with that through communication, providing information to store managers and the customer regarding services being performed and parts being ordered, and forcing people to be accountable when they don't finish a repair in a decent amount of time because they're 'waiting on a part.'

[Nokia]

What sucks about it is how backlogged many stores are with systems to ship out, and do various other things to do to them. This in turn increases turn times, which lowers revenue, which lowers labor budgets, which creates a larger backlog, etc. That's where the main fault and problem lies.

[CApollo]

How so?  Is it just that the system they have set up to get things shipped out is inefficient?  I've noticed the reoccuring theme of extreme lack of coordination between the store, shipping, and the service centers.  Even when there's a request by the store to have something shipped back from the service center overnight, the message doesn't seem to get through.  I've always thought Best Buy had a lot of faults in their various web pages.  For a long time I couldn't log into my reward zone account with my email address for no obvious reason whatsoever, and when I'd forget my password it sometimes took days for the email to reach me.  This makes me think that whoever is designing these data systems for them is doing a really poor job.  If it was all better integrated do you think rapid exchange would work better?

Or perhaps I'm misinterpreting and you're saying that the stores are overloaded by the number of items they're trying to funnel to the service centers.  At the store in my area they seem to get items shipped within a day, but then they sit at the service center.  Perhaps this isn't the case in other areas.

[Nokia]

That's part of the reason. The systems are continually upgraded instead of scrapped and rebuilt. So you end up with systems from 1995 that have just had stuff tacked onto them since then. Code is extremely inefficient, the programs are ridiculously bloated. This has begun to change, though, so things are looking up.

I know a lot of stores that are backlogged not just with units to ship, but with units to perform in-store services on. I was more commenting on you suggesting in-store repairs. There is barely enough labor to get the current services done. Adding in-store repairs would require many more employees, and a drastically increased labor budget.

I do know of a store that once had a backlog of a month because they ran out of the boxes that they ship the computers in.