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Currently I am struggling with Dell customer support, which inspired me to find out more about my rights as a customer and additional information about general laws which are in place regarding warranties.

My purchase at Dell provides me with a warranty of one year. However, I have been experiencing issues with their product for over three months now. During this time I continuously was in touch with tech support, and have had three hardware replacements made to fix the product, all of which failed. At the time of writing, over three months into my warranty I have thus yet to receive a functioning system.

My questions pertaining to this therefore are:

  • Is there no ruling in place for the warranty to be extended in order to make up for the lost time where in principal no functioning product was delivered?
  • Is there any ruling which concerns itself with compensation for the delayed delivery of a functioning product?

The reason I ask this is my intuition tells me it would be rather unjust to provide 'warranty support' for a full year, continuously trying to fix a laptop, after which the warranty expires and still no functioning system is delivered.

For reference, I will link to Dell's Limited Hardware Warranty. However, I am wondering more specifically about more general laws which are in place to prevent this.

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  • This might be a relevant section in the warranty: "DELL DOES NOT WARRANT THAT THE OPERATION OF ANY DELL PRODUCT WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR FREE. OUR LIABILITY WILL BE NO MORE THAN THE AMOUNT YOU PAID FOR THE SPECIFIC PRODUCT THAT IS THE SUBJECT OF A CLAIM. THIS IS THE MAXIMUM AMOUNT FOR WHICH WE ARE RESPONSIBLE." However, this could still imply a full refund is warranted.
    – Steven Jeuris
    Oct 6, 2016 at 16:38
  • Furthermore: "The warranty period is not extended if we repair or replace a warranted product or any parts."
    – Steven Jeuris
    Oct 6, 2016 at 16:54
  • Stating your country would have been useful.
    – gnasher729
    Dec 6, 2016 at 9:15
  • Purchased online through a UK retailer. In touch with technical support from Dell in Denmark (for the warranty), which operates from Sweden it seems. Dell's warranty is transferable, originally it was registered in the UK.
    – Steven Jeuris
    Dec 6, 2016 at 11:05

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I dont know where you are but in the UK you have a clause in consumer rights that a product must be "fit for purpose" and a non working computer is not fit for purpose. The supplier should either provide a replacement or refund.

This can not be voided by any contract other than stating that it is "sold as seen" which both parties have to agree upon, but I doubt this is the case with Dell

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  • This is in line with what I phrase in the question, and seems to confirm there is no such ruling in place. The best bet then indeed seems to be to apply for a full refund instead within the given warranty time, as no warranty extension will be offered (also see my earlier comment on my question).
    – Steven Jeuris
    Oct 6, 2016 at 17:18
  • Futhermore, asking for a full refund and buying the same system again will in fact result in an extended warranty, albeit with a bit more of a hassle (or is it?).
    – Steven Jeuris
    Oct 6, 2016 at 17:40
  • The law is similar in Australia except that, in addition, Dell have committed an offense by saying you do not have these rights - penalties in the millions per offense
    – Dale M ♦
    Oct 7, 2016 at 2:24
  • @DaleM What exactly are you referring to? Which rights?
    – Steven Jeuris
    Oct 7, 2016 at 10:23
  • @StevenJeuris: In the EU, in Australia, and hopefully some other places, there are consumer rights in place that give consumers rights against the seller of a product, beyond what the warranty says. Roughly speaking the product should be fit for its purpose for a "reasonable" amount of time, and "reasonable" depends on many things.
    – gnasher729
    Oct 10, 2016 at 12:19

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