The Nvidia Defect Forum

Hi All,

I have a HP DV2799 that cost me £870 and failed after 2 years. Luckily I found this forum and I have contacted Dixons via email who asked me straight away to get an engineers report. I obtained a report from Paul at Lapcure and sent it off to Dixons with the cover letter. They failed to respond after two weeks so I called them Friday (14th May) and I was told that someone was looking into the case and I would receive a call back within 48 hours. Well I got a call yesterday (Sat 15th May) and I was offered a repair. I said that I did not want a repair because the new parts would have the same fault but the man from Dixons tried to say that they thought that the laptop could be repaired and that they didn't think HP would supply new motherboards with the same defect. I asked if he could give me written confirmation that that the new parts would not have the same defect which he said he couldn't do but kept trying to convince me he thought it could be repaired and that he didn't think HP would supply more faulty parts. This conversation went round in circles for a while and he said that all they would offer at this time is a repair and a refund for the engineers report. He gave me a ref number and asked if I wanted to think about and get back to them. I said that I did not want to think about it and there was no way I was going to accept a repair. I said that I will be making a claim through the small claims court if they could not offer me a refund or replacement laptop. So it looks like I'm going to have to start a claim with the courts!

Hello Trfletch,

Well, they are going to have a hard time trying to defend your claim.

Remember, in your report it states:-



You will note the date of the BIOS update, 8th April 2008, which is approximately ONE WEEK after you purchased the laptop.

Bear in mind that it takes time to write the BIOS code, so HP must have known well before the 8th April that your model of laptop were failing in large numbers otherwise why did they release this BIOS upgrade?

If this is the case then, in my opinion, that means that HP allowed the continued sale of products that they must have known were inherently defective, including yours. Instead of releasing this BIOS update HP should have contacted owners of your model of laptop and informed them of the potential of the premature catastrophic failure of the laptop.

Furthermore, as this BIOS update was released one week after you purchased the laptop then it it highly likely that your laptop was unprotected from the overheating from the moment you purchased the laptop.

Regarding the offer of a repair; Why can't Dixons provide a written guarantee I wonder?

Remember, there were no new GPU's made to replace those that are defective. Nvidia have paid out compensation and have moved on to the next generation of chips.

I would be interested to know part numbers etc of these boards that Dixons claim will be fault free.

You were quite right to file a small claims action against them. In the absence of a written guarantee their offer of a repair is, in my opinion, worthless.

If you have any questions or need any advice then please let me know.

Best wishes

Paul
The Admin Team

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Please note that I am not legally qualified and I only offer my own personal advice. You are advised to seek professional legal advice for formal clarification of advice I give.

It looks like they have updated the Moneyclaim site so its a bit different to your instructions. It now looks like the attached image. I can only fit the following text and a bit more into the claim box so I cannot fit the bit about the interest in:

I purchased my laptop on 16/03/08 from Dixons. On 20/02/10 my laptop failed due to an inherently defective Nvidia GPU. I researched the problem and found that this issue is affecting thousands of laptops worldwide and is a known fault. I have obtained an engineers report, of which Dixons has a copy, which confirms the defect in my laptop. I sent a letter to Dixons requesting a refund/replacement and that they comply with the Sales of Goods Act but to date have not had a favourable response. Having exhausted all other means possible I am now forced into this action. I am claiming the cost of the laptop, engineers report and other costs totaling £971.39.

Is this ok? I am claiming for the laptop (£869.99), the report (£65), 5 hours researching at £7 an hour (£35) and postage of report to Dixons (£1.40). What do I put in the new section about claiming interest? Such as "Date money became owed to you", "Daily rate of interest up to the date of judgment (%)".

Also do I need to tick the tickbox at the top of the page regarding sending detailed particulars to the defendant?

Is MCOL putting in the carriage returns or are you? I would have expected more to go onto each line.

I make it that you've only used 660 characters so you should have plenty left - the two lines remaining appear to be limiting you though.

You really need to break down what you are claiming in a bit more detail so could do with using the full 1080 characters - you must always include the full wording for the interest claim (although it looks like MCOL may add it in for you looking at the info they're asking for).

Interest (the rate you are allowed is 8%):



The detailed particulars tickbox is if you want to send a separate Particulars of Claim document (ie: not limited to 1080 characters). If you tick it then you must ensure that the defendant receives this within 14 days from the date of service of the claim form - if they don't then you claim could be struck out (send it recorded delivery so you can prove delivery). You will also need to provide your local court with a copy if the case is defended & transferred to them.

From memory, the time for the defendant to reply gets extended if you send on a separate Particulars of Claim based on the date they receive it (although I'm not 100% sure on this).

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Please note: I am not legally qualified and therefore any postings I make are just my own personal opinion based on my experience of working for a number of years at a busy County Court.

Thanks for the response. I am not putting in the line breaks, the system is doing that. Is there any benefit in asking for interest as well except to of course get a few more quid (i.e. does it speed up your claim?) I was just wondering because I am only really interested in getting the money back for my laptop, the court fee's and the engineers report so I wanted to know if it is worth the hassle of working out how I am going to fit in the text for a start as well as what answers to give for all the questions regarding when the money was owed to me (i.e. is this from when my laptop failed, when the last cost was incurred such as the postage of the report etc) and also what percentage to use because it asks for daily percentage and the 8% figure you mentioned is yearly.

Do people usually send a separate Particulars of Claim document to the defendant? Is this going to help my chances of getting my money back or should I not worry about it?

Sorry for all the questions but thanks in advance for any help anyone can offer.

Regards
Tony

Hello again Tony,


That's odd - there's no way it's going to let you get anywhere near the 1080 character limit doing that I'll ask a few questions when I'm at work tomorrow and see what I can find out.

No extra benefit whatsoever - just extra dosh.

Normally the start date for the interest would be the day the laptop failed (ie: when the bulk of the money became due). To get the daily rate just multiply the total of the claim by 0.00022.

Up to now there's been no need for a separate PoC document. However, if the number of characters available is going to be further limited then it might be something that has to be considered.

At the end of the day the defendant won't read it anyway - they'll just send the normal clutching at straws defence to the court

Once you get to the Allocation Questionnaire stage you can start to serve more documentation on the court & defendant anyway so, providing you can explain your claim clearly enough in the space allowed, then I would just use that for now.


No problem with the number of questions - the important thing is to make sure that your claim is correct.

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Please note: I am not legally qualified and therefore any postings I make are just my own personal opinion based on my experience of working for a number of years at a busy County Court.

Thanks for this, I'll wait to here from you before finishing my claim.

Am I actually likely to even get this interest plus the £7 an hour etc for research plus the full cost of my laptop back and engineers report and court fees? I haven't read all the posts on this forum but some I have glanced at seem to show people accepting a refund of less than the full cost of their laptop (usually worked out by how long they have had it).

Wouldn't this give me the daily amount as opposed to the daily percentage which I think is what they are asking for (I could be wrong)?

Thanks, I think I won't bother with this bit then if it is not really necessary.

OK - it looks like there was a slight problem which has now been resolved (To test it I've just tried pasting your text into a dummy claim and it's now showing as 8 lines remaining).

This all depends on numerous factors.
Purchase price of laptop - there could be a deduction made for the usage you've had both if the defendant makes an offer or if it goes to a hearing before a District Judge. There again there might not be. The best thing to do is use Paul's (lapcure) formula to work out what the maximum deduction should be: (Purchase price divided by expected lifetime of laptop(in months)) multiplied by the number of months you had use of the laptop.

The question here is how long should the laptop last - I would say between 5 & 6 years, retailers would say 3 to 4 years and the judge could say anything (one recent judgement reported on this forum shows that the judge appeard to use 6 years 7 months!).

Research costs may or may not be allowed (although most judges would allow you something for your time).

Engineers cost should be allowed as an incidental expenditure but the defendant may not include them as part of an offer.

Court fees are automatically added onto the claim and should always form part of an offer.

Whatever is allowed, you should get interest on it (if claimed).

However, bear in mind that if your claim excluding court fees goes over £1000 then the issue fee (and some later fees) will increase.

Bear in mind that it's impossible to predict the final outcome of a court claim.

It's the amount that's needed here (it's supposed to make it easier for the defendant to work out how much they owe you if they decide to settle).

I hope this all makes sense

_________________
Please note: I am not legally qualified and therefore any postings I make are just my own personal opinion based on my experience of working for a number of years at a busy County Court.

Hi Ciderboy,

Thanks once again for the reply, I have tried started a new claim and it seems I can now add more lines of text, not sure what happened with my original claim (must be a bug in the website!). I think after all I will claim for interest (I may as well now I can fit the extra text in the box!). I realise you use the formula to work out the daily interest but I'm just wondering what I put in the box that says "Daily rate of interest up to the date of judgment (%):" or are you saying I should put 0.00022% in that box?

Apologies - I hadn't spotted the % there.

I personally think that this is another bug - with all claims we normally refer to the daily rate as pence. I've never heard of it expressed as a percentage before

It might be worth giving the helpline a call to confirm but personally I would just express it in pence.

_________________
Please note: I am not legally qualified and therefore any postings I make are just my own personal opinion based on my experience of working for a number of years at a busy County Court.