Laptop battery failure, under guarantee, deal with shop or HP?

[DiamondEcho]

Hi,

I have an HP laptop, bought in April 2018. Unfortunately something has gone wrong, it won't operate under battery power. If I am using it on mains and unplug the mains cable it immediately completely crashes. Diagnostics suggest a section of it's internal battery-pack has failed and it states that the battery needs replacing, just it's not even at all clear how to locate the battery, unlike older laptops where you could externally pop or clip them in out. Ie I'm not just replacing a bettery, I'm perhaps having to send off my whole laptop... IDK, but not an amusing prospect.

That's an outline of the problem, but my question is actually regarding consumer rights for products under guarantee. I have just returned from 10 years abroad and feel very out of touch with UK consumer law/rights etc. Is my first stop, my first point of call with the retailer or the manufacturer? The retailer's website even suggests they'll visit your home collect any of three brands of laptop, and return it when it's fixed - handy, except that doesn't include HP laptops. So do I take it to the shop branch [John Lewis], or am I meant to be dealing with HP directly, 'wherever they are located' in the UK? I cannot see this explained, will of course ask them, but wld also just like to x-check where the purely legal obligation stands in this case.

Thx!

Ref: John Lewis, ref/expand section: 'Laptop and PC guarantees'. https://www.johnlewis.com/customer-services/guarantees

Moderator Message:
Moved from DAK to Legal Issues (Practical) leaving a link - Chris

[Breelander]

John Lewis are usually good with their guarantees. If the diagnostics say the battery is dead then there should be no quibble.

FYI, although the battery on a modern laptop is often internal, it can still easily be replaced. See this video...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB1c9EVswX8

At a minimum I'd expect John Lewis to replace your battery under guarantee.

[jackdaww]

your contract is with the retailer , not the manufacturer.

you are covered by the consumer rights act 2015 .

the warranty/ guarantee is really not relevant , but many retailers will try to push you down that route.

you should expect a reasonable time without trouble - i would say up to 3 years for a laptop.

[bungeejumper]

+1 for John Lewis regarding warranties. Should be no problem, no quibble.

I did once have a problem with a retail shed that tried to fob me off when a four month old HP computer died because of a dead hard disk. The b@stards tried to tell me that I had to take it up with the distributors (in the Netherlands) and not with them, because it was a component failure, wasn't it? Not their fault, guv.

Three minutes on the phone to the trading standards officer, and it was all sorted. A month later, the retail shed (Comet, for it was they) went bust. Fancy that.

BJ

[DiamondEcho]

I was surprised that John Lewis called me this lunchtime, in response to my e-mail of yesterday. They suggest I take it in to the shop and they will send it to HP. I might expect it to take circa '10 Working days, though it could be 28 days all in'. Hmmm, so that's too long and risky for me to consider before a holiday planned in a few weeks time when I need it with me, even if only running from the mains power cable.

For the record this contradicts the pre-installed HP diagnostic app test report that I ran, that directed me to deal directly with HP.

I'm concerned about the security of my files etc, especially the financial data, statements etc. I asked how a customer should manage that. They suggested I do a full-back-up, and move sensitive data off the machine. Hmmm... that sounds like quite a job in itself as those files might be spread around rather than in clearly identified folders. Is there another way? IDK... creating a 2nd log-in that gives access to the machine, but without access to my personal data? Feels a bit wishful, but thought I'd ask!

Many thanks for the posts/support above.

[Rover110]

It's possible that the hard disk or its contents will not survive the repair. Perhaps because they decide it is easier to replace the whole laptop, or because a pin breaks off a vital connector during dismantling, or "to get to a known starting-point" they decide to do a full reinstall of the software, or the laptop gets lost or dropped somewhere along the process.

Yes it is a huge amount of work to do backups. I am not as rigorous as I should be. But hard disks do fail, and if that's the only place where your family photographs going years back are stored... (Well most might still be on the machine that this one replaced, but you don't know if that one will even start up now).

Maybe the right approach would be to buy a cheap USB hard drive and copy all the files there. I bought a 4 TB drive for less than £100. The copying will take time.

As to security, they will have full BIOS access, and might be able to get round many passwords.

Hope this helps,
Rover

I'm concerned about the security of my files etc, especially the financial data, statements etc. I asked how a customer should manage that. They suggested I do a full-back-up, and move sensitive data off the machine. Hmmm... that sounds like quite a job in itself as those files might be spread around rather than in clearly identified folders. Is there another way? IDK... creating a 2nd log-in that gives access to the machine, but without access to my personal data? Feels a bit wishful, but thought I'd ask!

[Howard]

It would be surprising if you don’t get really good service from John Lewis. I’d guess that they must have a process for replacing/repairing laptops. I’d be inclined to visit the store with the computer and politely but firmly ask the manager to help you solve the problem with the laptop they sold you and guaranteed.

Unless you have a huge number of photos or videos stored on the machine since you purchased it in April you could copy all your confidential files onto a USB stick. (The backup of all my Excel and Word files, PDFs, photos etc takes up less than 10% of the memory on a Sandisk 16 GB stick which costs around £5 on Amazon). To be absolutely safe, you could duplicate it on two sticks.

Once you are certain you have copied your personal data, it could be deleted from the laptop. Everything that was on the machine when you purchased it will be easily replicated on a new computer even if the original computer fails.

It would be reasonable to ask John Lewis for a loan laptop if the repair was to take longer than 10 days. This would hopefully allow you to function when on holiday?

A slightly more expensive solution would be to buy a Chromebook as a back-up for your holiday. For around £180 I’d recommend an Acer from Currys. I have one for holiday travel. This will give you amazingly fast access to everything you use on the web and is ideal for BBC iplayer type functions as well. The only problem with this idea is that when it is repaired or replaced you’ll probably find your HP laptop slow and clunky compared with the speed of a Chromebook!

Hopefully you don't store passwords on the computer. As a final precaution, in any case I'd change my critical passwords immediately after leaving the computer with the store.

Obviously this is a layman's reflection on an approach. Experts may be along later to confirm or correct my views.

Wishing you good luck with John Lewis. Do let us know how you get on. You could jovially tell them you will be reporting on their performance on a forum with 3,500 members!

regards

Howard

[kiloran]

I'm concerned about the security of my files etc, especially the financial data, statements etc. I asked how a customer should manage that. They suggested I do a full-back-up, and move sensitive data off the machine. Hmmm... that sounds like quite a job in itself as those files might be spread around rather than in clearly identified folders. Is there another way? IDK... creating a 2nd log-in that gives access to the machine, but without access to my personal data? Feels a bit wishful, but thought I'd ask!

Many thanks for the posts/support above.

I would absolutely use software such as Macrium Reflect (free) to create a full backup of the PC to an external drive.
https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree
You should do this regularly (I am happy with a monthly backup), and it just takes an hour or so. Easy to set up, you just tell it to create a full disk image and it backs up absolutely everything.... personal files, programs, configuration, everything to allow you to rebuild the computer. If you need more help with this, I'm sure there are loads of happy Macrium users on this board who will help you.

Having got a backup, you need to delete your personal files before you hand it over. A minimum would be to delete all the contents of the Documents folder and then empty the Recycle Bin. That should be the absolute bare minimum, assuming that you don't save files in all manner of obscure locations. You might also delete the contents of the Pictures and Music folders but I suspect these contain less sensitive files.

A better idea might be to reset the PC back to its original factory settings, which should erase all of your data, user accounts, etc.

But first, get that backup done. Make a habit of it. And practice how to retrieve files from backup. Without that, you are scuppered.

When you get the laptop back, you can reinstall the full disk image (a single command in Macrium will do this) and it will look exactly as the PC did when you took the backup. Alternatively, you can reinstall specific files or folders, such as the Documents folder

--kiloran

[gryffron]

For the record this contradicts the pre-installed HP diagnostic app test report that I ran, that directed me to deal directly with HP.

It's probably American. USA has few legal customer rights, so warranties matter much more there. In UK/EU you are much better off relying on legal consumer rights. A manufacturer's warranty should be a last resort here.

Gryff

[DiamondEcho]

As a temp placeholder. I've decided to take it with me shortly on holiday, and ONLY run it from mains: It seems ok like that. '10 working days, to 'a month all-in' just to replace a battery isn't an option right now, I've even considered whether I could replace the battery myself, it can't be THAT difficult, Youtube vids show me precisely how to do it and a new battery is £40... Ah, the price of these latter-day internal batteries to give cases seamless pretty iBook like appearances...

On the bright side I was having another problem with my old but powerful workhorse of a desktop PC; it wouldn't boot Windows. Cripes two IT crises at once > stress. TG I managed to fix the PC today, seems it had juggled the boot-drive order/sequence in the BIOS settings so wouldn't start windows up. Reset that, seems ok now. Touch wood etc. Reckon that might have been caused by unknowingly leaving a RAM-stick in a USB socket and switching on the machine, hence the PC tried to boot from it, and changed the BIOS start-up routine. IDK, but I have had exactly that happen before and recovered from it: Never, ever leave 'not in active use right now' RAM-sticks in USB sockets is my reminder from this...

[servodude]

Certainly replacing the battery yourself is an option
- it's generally a simple enough task if you have the correct replacement and know where to get to all the screws

I've done it on two of our laptops in the past couple of months as they had both reached that point in their natural life where it was necessary

However given your PC is so new what you have is a fault and it is not always going to be obvious to the inspection software whether the fault is in a cell, on the battery pack, in the communications to it, or in the charging hardware on the main motherboard
- so I would strongly suggest that you have this handled under warranty
- not least because if you replace the pack yourself and the problem returns you might have compromised your posistion for having it fixed

In any circumstance - back up your data first, and regularly, and check the backup worked

have fun
- sd

[bungeejumper]

Screws? The last time I looked, the battery on my laptop was a slide-out affair where your biggest challenge was to click the releasing tabs.

Same with every other laptop I've ever had, apart from a Zenith twenty years ago which burst into smoke and flames on my desktop and had to be thrown out of an upper-storey window after the 240 volt charging socket malfunctioned. Happy days.

BJ

[scrumpyjack]

Whilst I do backup regularly, by putting stuff in my Dropbox folder it gets automatically backed up to the net. If you are paranoid you can zip your files to a password protected zip file and copy that to Dropbox, 7zip has the password facility and is free.

[mc2fool]

If you are paranoid you can zip your files to a password protected zip file and copy that to Dropbox, 7zip has the password facility and is free.

Or you can use https://www.sync.com/, which gives you a free 5GB of zero knowledge end-to-end encrypted* cloud storage, syncing a folder tree on and across your device(s), with also the option to have a non-synced online archive. I use it for all my "sensitive" files.

(And I use Google Drive for the non-sensitive stuff as, while Sync.com does have an Android app, Google Drive has better integration on my phone, esp. for stuff like photos.)

* Your files are encrypted on the fly while being uploaded, stored that way online, and decrypted on the fly when downloaded, and without your password leaving your device(s). See https://www.sync.com/pdf/sync-privacy.pdf for the technical details.

[kiloran]

Screws? The last time I looked, the battery on my laptop was a slide-out affair where your biggest challenge was to click the releasing tabs.

Same with every other laptop I've ever had, apart from a Zenith twenty years ago which burst into smoke and flames on my desktop and had to be thrown out of an upper-storey window after the 240 volt charging socket malfunctioned. Happy days.

BJ

I bought a couple of HP laptops (different models) over the past 4-6 weeks, and both have internal batteries which can only be accessed by removing some screws (2 of which are hidden) and levering the back off the laptop. The OP's laptop is also an HP so I guess is similar.

Such is progress

--kiloran

[DiamondEcho]

Screws? The last time I looked, the battery on my laptop was a slide-out affair where your biggest challenge was to click the releasing tabs. Same with every other laptop I've ever had, apart from a Zenith twenty years ago which burst into smoke and flames on my desktop and had to be thrown out of an upper-storey window after the 240 volt charging socket malfunctioned. Happy days. BJ

Same prior experience for me BJ: But not this time. There is no external access to the battery, full stop. It's internal, which means taking the case off, and 'detaching it' somehow from inside.

[servodude]

Sadly these days if there's not screws it's likely a crow bar you need (I'm looking at you Surface Book!)

they can be awkward to find:
- to gain access to the inside of my old Dell Latitude there are 6 screws on the bottom and two on the rear that need to be found (some under anti tamper stickers and most originally fixed with a dab of loctite)

have fun
- sd

[DiamondEcho]

So I've got to send this in to get repaired, since I don't know the extent of the problem. And that will take 14-28 working days.
I'm going to make my 14 day holiday and address this afterwards...