If you bought a computer from Curry's and after 3 to 4 years the PSU went faulty causing damamge to the motherboard,keyboard,mouse and possibly any perphials attached to the computer at the time also got damaged?
Were does the purchaser stand in relation the damage?
Thanks.
Forgot to say the PSU in the computer was a common fault as the internet shows this fault widely.
I've seen many, many failed PSUs, but I've yet to see one that managed to fail in this way, taking a whole bunch of other components with it. Are you sure this is the case?
As for your question - surely it's a trick question; no one would buy a PC from Currys.
Stuff from Curry's has only a year's automatic guarantee unless you pay for a longer cover AFAIK.
Cheers, Jim D
On the other side of the room watching his computer explode.
emachine by any chance?
Adam
Unless you bought the extended warranty (aka retailer margin booster), you are in the time range where your options are to either
a) push on the retailer
b) push on the credit card company if a) doesn't bring anything
c) take legal action
The retailer, in the form of DRG, is likely to try to hide behind the limited time of the warranty. While this doesn't affect your statutory rights etc. I would be very surprised if they were to agree to roll over and repair or replace for free. You could always ask I suppose.
For something like a consumer PC after 3-4 years, especially if a low to mid range product, there is not a lot of perceived or actual value left since depreciation is rapid.
So let's say that you decided to pursue them legally. How would you demonstrate that the damage to the other components, especially peripherals, was due to the faulty PSU? You mentioned that it was a known fault. Were there a lot of people who also suffered damaged peripherals? i.e. a consistency? Did the retailer do anything about those?
You could treat the base unit as an entity and say that it's faulty. The consumer can't necessarily be expected to know that a PSU broke a motherboard, memory and internal disk if the product was bought as a system. If he had bought the bits separately, it's another thing. Looking at it that way, all that is left are keyboard and mouse and value of those is practically zero. So rather than getting into details and attempting diagnosis to subassembly level, I think it would be better to approach it as a complete system.
The question then is the likely outcome were you to pursue a legal case against the retailer. I suspect that the end, which might be some compensation, wouldn't justify the time and effort after this time has elapsed.
Hah! a sensible reply,Yes it was an E420 I'd of thought the comp would been recalled if it had a +5v rise in the PSU sending it up to about +9v
Yep,the +5v rail had risen to +9v so anything on the +5v rail would be fried?
If so then you could also try that one with the retailer, although 3-4 years down the road???
Seen it happen once when one of the guy's working for me set up a PC supplied from the US without switching the PSU to 230 instead of 110, Nice loud pop, wisp of white smoke and that unmistakeable acrid "its dead" smell ( I love the smell of fried electrolytics in the morning!!) Took out MB Monitor and printer !!. And provided months of piss take :-)
I'd look on the bright side - you've still got a working monitor, and after 4 years the PC has probably already lasted longer than you could reasonably expect a cheap Currys PC to last.
Owain
I have had seen this happen once...
The voltage output on the PSU was sky high under test. I could not establish if the was the PSU that died and took out the other components, or a lightning strike on the power feed that killed them all together. (It was on a customers site which was famaous for dodgy power).
It needed new PSU, MB, Optical drives, modem, and keyboard to fix. The Floppy and HDD survived!
Especially one of the crappy eMachine things with the hopelessly underspecced PSUs[1]. I must have replaced at least four of them for different people.
[1] I have seen 1GHz PIII systems with 90W PSUs fitted where the stated max output on the 12V rails was less than the requirement for just one of the fitted drivesIn article ,
Saw someone do that at work. Reached round the back to switch off a piece of kit, and flipped it to 120V. It did go off, but with rather a bang. In this case, it was a £22k protocol analyser. Fortunately only destroyed the PSU. Manufacturer came out to fix it, and suggested disconnecting the stupidly accessible voltage selector switch -- a common problem apparently.
Another one I heard about was a demo involving four Sun Ultra 10's. They were shipped out from the US where they had been setup and the demo tested. Arrived in Germany at the conference centre with US power cords and multi-way socket strip. All plugged in, except the strip wouldn't plug into a German outlet. One of the guys nips out to a hardware store to get an adaptor, and returns. As he plugs it in, all four Ultra 10's power supplies explode together. You know that sinking feeling, an hour before the exhibition opens... (AFAIK, the Ultra 5/10 were the only Sun workstations to ship with voltage selector switches rather than wide ranging PSU's.)
You can pursue for up to 6 years. However, supposing to win, you are only likely to get back a proportion representing the remaining life you might have expected. Unless it was a particularly high quality expensive unit, I would have said the life of a domestic computer would be only about 4 years before it was obsoleted and valueless. What spec system is it and how much did it cost?
Lots of things only have a 12 month guarantee but that doesn't necessarily mean the liabilty ends there ,depending on what the item is ,cost etc .
S
But how long the court will decide it ought to last depends on the quality of the brand. With a cheap computer I expect youd be wasting your time. A replacement 3 yr old wouldnt cost a lot anyway.
NT
He could sue them for damamges to his perphials! There should be a health warning about attaching your perphials to the computer!
In a cowpat!
Woops! I build my own,this thing I'm on now has lasted 6 years now and was half the price of a shop model when built.
Me go to currys/pcworld/comet/tiny, ya must be joking.
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