The Nvidia Defect Forum

I had a Sony VGN-FZ21M purchased at John Lewis Newcastle for £799 in December 2007. It started playing up with the NVIDIA problem about 3 or 4 months ago, gradually getting worse and worse until completely unreliable. I knew by the nature of the problems (display problems on start-up or mid session, start-up aborting, incredible heating up) that it was the graphics chip, so typed NVIDIA into Google and found this site; lo and behold I was not alone!

I have followed advice from this excellent site and managed to get a satisfactory solution. Initially I contacted Sony about their offered repair within 4 years, but was not keen on this when I read here about the problem returning in repaired machines. Also, the Sony e-mail giving instructions on how to get the repair was not that clear and in not the greatest English; besides which, the machine was getting so hot I suspected that other components may have had their life seriously reduced and other faults may then turn up.

So I followed the path suggested here. At first I contacted the John Lewis online Technical Support, they gave me an incident number and told me to get an engineers report then it could be taken in-store to discuss compensation. I used a local firm to do the engineer report (£30) and they confirmed it was the main board / graphics chip.

Took the laptop, report, tech support e-mail and reference number into the store, and was sorted out within 20 minutes! They were able to see all the earlier correspondence with their online TS using the number, I also think they gave them a quick call to confirm, then actually stated it was an "inherent defect" and they had "a duty of care".

They offered a replacement value of £250 + £30 report fee, which I think is excellent considering I had had nearly 4 years use out of the machine. I got a very good spec brand new notebook for only £19 extra, so a great outcome.

I really cannot praise John Lewis highly enough, they are the epitome of well-organised, thoughtful customer service.

As for Sony and NVIDIA, well they are a disgrace, they have tried to bury this and I only discovered this forum by chance. Many people will have simply ditched an affected laptop or worse, paid a fortune to have it repaired themselves. Hopefully when John Lewis negotiate the next big contract with Sony for laptops, they will drive some appropriate discounts out of them!

Many thanks for setting this forum up and giving such excellent advice.

Best Regards,

Keith

Hello Keith,

Well done on your success.

I am really pleased that we could have helped and that you have reached this positive resolution.

I have to agree with you regarding Sony, though I will reserve judgement on Nvidia because at least they stood up and admitted to the problems with their product. According to Nvidia for every GPU they sold for $20 it is costing them up to $200 to correct. Not many other companies have done that.

Take a look at the speech on this forum given by Nvidia, none of the laptop manufacturers have come out into the open like they did.

Anyway, let's not detract from your success.

Well done again and all the very best for the future.

Best wishes

Paul
The Admin Team

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