Laptop repair gone south... what would you do?

[Blue House Computer Help]

So I have a problem and I'm wondering what you would do in my situation.

I had a customer bring in an expensive (for me) laptop for repair. One of the hinges had broken away from the rear case (the plastic screw mountings behind the screen) and in the process had wrecked the lcd panel. Unfortunately, I could only get a replacement LCD from China, and it took weeks to arrive, because it got unfairly held up in customs for VAT (tax charges) which I had already paid through Ebay when I bought it.

The customer was getting more and more desperate, and I finally managed to get the screen and work on it last Thursday. However, this laptop has really tiny screws that mount the hinge to the palm rest and, perhaps because of all the stress of the screen hanging the the other hinge for an extended period, it broke away from the palm rest mounting the while I was trying to disassemble it. Since I discovered it as I was disassembling it, I honestly have no way of knowing if it was something I did, or if it was already broken underneath, or had already been weakened and this was just the final straw.

When I spoke to the customer about this, she decided to bail out of the repair and claim the laptop on her home insurance as not economical to repair. However, if I have to return the parts, including sending the screen to China and she pays nothing (since it wasn't fixed), I'm going to lose out on about £60, and about 3 hours labour up to this point, plus the time to repack and ship bits back. As far as I can see, I would have to replace the palm rest at a further cost of about £120, which, since I was unsure whether it might have been me who broke it, I offered to pay. However, she's going with claiming the insurance money and going out to buy a new laptop.

It seems unfair and difficult to collect to ask her to pay for the time accrued so far, since I'm not delivering back a fix laptop. I haven't specifically discussed a no-fix, no-fee with her, but that seems to be the assumption she's working on so far. So far, I've been cooperating with her in terms of setting information together for the insurance claim, but I do feel a certain amount of unresolved tension.

There are a few more interesting details to the story, but this should be enough to get the gist of the situation so I'll leave it at that and add more if needed.

Pragmatically speaking what would you do in this situation? Charge for the parts and/or labour anyway? At least charge a restocking fee? What could I legitimately charge her for? I guess there's a question of actually getting her to pay it, really.

 

[HCHTech]

No chance of epoxying the mount back together? JB Weld has rescued a fair number of hinge mounts for us. Barring that, did you look to see if you could get the case from the OEM?

Two things we do differently:

1. We charge a diagnostic fee upfront for all bench repairs. If the customer decides not to proceed with the repair once the problem is identified, we keep the fee. If they do decide to repair, we credit that fee as a prepayment against the final bill.

2. We've stopped ordering parts that aren't reasonably available from our vendors, Amazon (US vendors only) or OEM. Too much nonsense like you've experienced.

As to how to handle, I would eat the labor and part charges and just toss the screen on my shelf somewhere in the very narrow chance some future repair could use it. It's only 60 pounds. Not worth the effort to return, IMO. That gets the customer out of your hair with the least amount of drama, and also with no basis to complain or leave a bad review.

 

[Blue House Computer Help]

Interesting. I may go that way.

I should clarify that the 60 pounds I was talking about was how much I'll be down due to shipping and possible additional customs fees by the time I have returned the LCD screen and the back cover. The screen alone was £193.

 

[Blue House Computer Help]

Wow.. Is JB Weld strong enough to hold a hinge in place on a top cover mounting?

 

[britechguy]

Is JB Weld strong enough to hold a hinge in place on a top cover mounting?

That's red nail enamel over Harbor Freight's Super Weld Epoxy. That whole corner had entirely broken off. If you use enough (you can't just delicately glue the crack line) to form supporting structure on both sides of the crack it tends to work very well indeed and is often stronger than the original.

 

[Larry Sabo]

Wow.. Is JB Weld strong enough to hold a hinge in place on a top cover mounting?

Sure, I do it all the time using JB Plastic Weld. Roughen the surfaces well before applying the JB Weld, and clamp it securely until it sets for a day or so.

 

[britechguy]

Roughen the surfaces well

A very important point, and thanks for adding it. Glues in general abhor slick surfaces, and many plastic surfaces had might as well be glass as far as glue is concerned.

My very favorite stuff for doing this, which has gotten hard to find in brick and mortar stores around here, is Devcon Plastic Welder. The stuff stinks to high heaven (while the JB Weld and Harbor Freight stuff I've used does not) and it claims to actually slightly dissolve the surface of the plastic itself as part of the curing process, making the bond even better.

But I don't miss the stink, that's for sure!

 

[timeshifter]

So you told her it was going to be $350 to repair her laptop then came back and said it's actually going to be $475 (I'm not trying to be accurate with the numbers, just want to understand the situation)?

Maybe offer to complete the repair at the agreed upon price of $350 and eat the difference?

If she declines then ask to keep the laptop (assuming her insurance doesn't have to have it).

 

[DRPCNZ]

Epoxy repair or carry the cost. Just a cost of doing business

 

[ThatPlace928]

View attachment 14799

That's red nail enamel over Harbor Freight's Super Weld Epoxy. That whole corner had entirely broken off. If you use enough (you can't just delicately glue the crack line) to form supporting structure on both sides of the crack it tends to work very well indeed and is often stronger than the original.

Not to be insensitive but I'm curious. What do you do about the nice red blob on the corner or is the customer okay with it that way? I've never seen that so I'm wondering if you can gently sand it down and spray paint it to match the lid? I had one hinge repair that was particularly stubborn but a bead of epoxy across the front of the hinge worked great. All you could see was a super thin black line.

 

[britechguy]

The nice red blob on the corner is my choice. This happens to be my own machine and I intended it to look a bit like a bleeding injury.

Any client who would ask me for this sort of repair, and that I'd do it for, has to accept something like that. As I said, you cannot make a fix like this that will last if all you do is make a beautiful glue repair on the crack and paint it over. The original fractured due to lack of structural strength. Gluing that weak point with no "added superstructure" is literally inviting the issue to return again in short order.

I could make it slightly prettier, I'm sure, if I wanted to sand the glue surface at least somewhat flat. But when it's painted over (and you can get nail enamel in virtually any color you can name) it looks like cake frosting, and that frosting can be made to match or contrast with the existing computer.

There are repairs that can work with a very discreet approach. Most hinge repairs are not of that class, in my experience. I want something that's stronger than what was there originally, as that's where the problem was in the first place.

 

[ThatPlace928]

The nice red blob on the corner is my choice. This happens to be my own machine and I intended it to look a bit like a bleeding injury.

Any client who would ask me for this sort of repair, and that I'd do it for, has to accept something like that. As I said, you cannot make a fix like this that will last if all you do is make a beautiful glue repair on the crack and paint it over. The original fractured due to lack of structural strength. Gluing that weak point with no "added superstructure" is literally inviting the issue to return again in short order.

I could make it slightly prettier, I'm sure, if I wanted to sand the glue surface at least somewhat flat. But when it's painted over (and you can get nail enamel in virtually any color you can name) it looks like cake frosting, and that frosting can be made to match or contrast with the existing computer.

There are repairs that can work with a very discreet approach. Most hinge repairs are not of that class, in my experience. I want something that's stronger than what was there originally, as that's where the problem was in the first place.

If it was my own, I'd probably just do it and not think about it, too. I guess you could always put a Superman bandaid across it or a bullet hole decal.... lol

 

[Blue House Computer Help]

Wow. This is much more informational than I originally anticipated.

 

[fincoder]

You can charge a fee for the insurance report, and that gets added to the claim and the customer is reimbursed. Might help to reclaim some of the sunk costs.

 

[timeshifter]

Is it common in the UK to have something like that covered by a homeowner's policy? In the US I don't think it is. My deductible is maybe $5,000 (I'd have to check), so it wouldn't be worthwhile to claim it as a loss - unless I had a special rider for it.

 

[britechguy]

My deductible is maybe $5,000 (I'd have to check), so it wouldn't be worthwhile to claim it as a loss - unless I had a special rider for it.

And not even then, and I speak from very hard experience. In the mid-1990s I had three different disasters occur in my townhouse in rapid succession, none of which cost more than $5000 (two not even close) to fix, but which were completely out of my control. The blizzard of 1996 piled so much snow on the roof, and the melting process resulted in ice damming and water damage to the soffits. An external pipe froze and burst, flooding my entire first floor to a depth of about 1.5" (the townhouse had no basement and was built on a concrete slab. Then a tree that was outside had invaded the main sewer line between the house and the main line, making everything "come up like a fountain" in the downstairs powder room toilet.

After filing those claims, I was promptly dropped by my insurer, and it was sheer hell to find anyone else to underwrite me again at anything other than an exorbitant rate.

After this, I talked with a friend who happened to be an insurance agent, and he said, "Oh, Brian, you did everything wrong!," and proceeded to explain that anyone who files small claims, and particularly several of them in a relatively short time period, will instantly get flagged as a "frequent flier" and dropped like a hot potato. He went on to say that I would have been considered way less of a "problem" by the insurance companies had my house burned to the ground and I'd filed a single claim for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Homeowner's insurance is truly structured to be a "for real emergencies only, where no one could reasonably afford the repair costs" product. Small claims on homeowner's insurance (at least in the USA) are to be avoided - really avoided.

 

[alexsmith2709]

You can charge a fee for the insurance report, and that gets added to the claim and the customer is reimbursed. Might help to reclaim some of the sunk costs.

I'd do this if you can. I charge half an hours labour to write an insurance letter and they can add this to the claim. If it hasnt gone past the point where you can bring up this charge i'd try it. It might be worth considering having a diagnostic fee in the future. I learnt this the hard way too. When i had my shop i offered no fix no fee, but this was based on either me not being able to fix it, or it not being economical to fix. If the customer chose not to they would pay the fee.

As @HCHTech said, i would only order through suppliers i had chosen and trusted and was available from the UK (one supplier was an exception based in Sweden, but they were a legit spare parts supplier for some of the main manufacturers). I learnt to say no to a repair to avoid waiting weeks from China and only to find there is something else wrong. I found people were much more accommodating if they find out within a couple days rather than waiting weeks that there is an extra cost.

 

[Blue House Computer Help]

So having spoken to her, she now recognises that there is going to be some money to pay for time already spent, even though the laptop is not fixed. She's already had the report, so I'm not sure about the report charge, but at least I'll get something out of it from the labour I've already put into it, Which should at least be enough to cover the lost money in shipping the parts back to China. So at least all I will have lost is time and not actual money (which is also not great, but not the same). So I'll consider that a small win.

I have also purchased some JB Weld, and we'll see how that goes next time it's needed. It would be nice to have a better first line of defence than just replace the whole thing, especially for people who baulk at the expensive price of replacement parts.

 

[Larry Sabo]

I have also purchased some JB Weld

There's a difference between JB Weld and JB PlasticWeld. I don't know for sure whether the difference is relevant for the plastic we encounter in laptops but I prefer JB PlasticWeld over plain JB Weld in these cases.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

We have lots of various parts from attempted repairs. With stuff like laptops, there's no 100% guarantee of success. Business grade laptops have a higher chance of successful repairs, as you step into residential models...chances are much less.

We look at customers differently since we're an MSP with business clients ...many of which are on a monthly plan. However for residential/walk ins...I'd certainly focus on a diagnostic fee. We do that...but it's very rare....because with laptops we're pretty quick to say "it's not worth repairing". With so many residential grade laptops being so cheap (to me..laptops under a thousand US dollars are cheap....not to mention those under 700..600...step into 500 bucks..and that's bottom grade ultra cheap). Doing the math, a few hours of "bench time"...the bill will easily exceed the cost of the laptop when it was purchased. That just doesn't add up to me. Having a repair bill exceed 50% of the cost of the laptop doesn't make sense to me either. That ROI just doesn't make sense.