The Nvidia Defect Forum

Hi there,

I've only just stumbled over this excellent forum so thank to the owners for providing this site.

I bought my son the above mentioned Sony laptop last April from Macro in Glasgow which has a Geforce 8400M GT graphics card and which has now developed a screen fault that I can only describe as similar to a television with very poor reception or a bad ariel.

You can see some stuff on the screen but obviously you couldn't work on it or use it for long periods I have however connected the laptop via it's HDMI port to a Panasonic plasma TV and the laptop works perfectly connected to the TV.

I think that there is some sort of loose connection inside the laptop or perhaps a dry joint on the MB or graphics card because after my son had told me that the laptop wasn't working (apparently it's been like this for a week but he is 21 and you know how they are at that age LOL) but when I carried it downstairs from his bedroom to the lounge it worked perfectly for about two minutes after it re-booted itself on opening but it's since gone back to the dodgy display thing and I can't get it to display properly now except when it's hooked up to the TV.

I contacted Macro last night who referred me to Sony's out of warranty call centre in Egypt which was worse than useless. They want me to send the laptop to them for inspection at a cost of £60 and then they'll tell me what's wrong with and charge me accordingly which is a bit much for an eighteen month old computer so I'm not going to go down that road.

I'm going to try to pursue Macro but I doubt I'll have much success with them as they are notoriously bad at CS so I would much rather get this thing sorted quickly with as little cost as possibly so if anyone could possibly point me in the right direction with regard to repair or replacement of the graphics card or suggest someone who might be able to effect a repair or direct me to a website where I might be able to do the repair myself I would be very grateful.

I'm quite handy but I know my limits and I also don't think I am prepared to spend loads of time or money on this problem but basically I just want my son to have his laptop working again but if needs be then he'll just have to use the work around of connecting to his TV until we manage to buy him a new cheaper laptop next year.

Thanks in advance for any replies/responses.

Regards.

Tony

Hello Tony and welcome to our forum.

Sorry to hear of the problems you have been experiencing with your laptop.

The problems you describe are manifestations of the defect so it does sound like your laptop has one of the defective GPU's.



Well, in my opinion nobody can be as bad as Comet and they are constantly being whooped over this matter so you should have no problems with Makro.

The Nvidia GPU in your laptop is integrated into the mainboard and so cannot be easily replaced.

The laptop can be made to work again, but to be honest repairs are prone to failure.

Only this week PC World offered a customer 2 choices. A partial refund or a repair. They then said:-



I think you will be throwing good money after bad as repairs of this type are prone to failure.

I would not give up on Makro so easily. First of all they cannot refer you Sony as your contract is with them and not with Sony and so they are 100% responsible for offering a resolution.

Secondly your warranty status is irrelevant as you have six years to take action against a retailer when the goods in question are inherently defective.

Granted, it may take you a few weeks to sort this out, but if you persist and your laptop is indeed inherently defective, then you really cannot lose.

I really do advise against a repair though. I run a repair company and see these machines (amongst others) day in and day out. I get plenty of opportunities to repair these, especially for customers who do not have proof of purchase and so cannot pursue a refund, yet I advise the customer against spending money on a repair.

If I have no confidence in a repair then I cannot charge for it and I am not alone in this conclusion.

I hope you don't mind me saying this.

If you can let me know the date of purchase I will calculate what refund you would receive as a minimum.

Best wishes

Paul
The Admin Team

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Thanks Paul



I'm just wondering why I can output to a TV, is this typical do you know or does most laptops just 'chuck it' with regard to the display and is it likely that the laptop will 'die' quite soon now that thisdefect has now manifested itself ?




No, believe me mate they are bad, as bad at CS as I've ever experienced and I've had recent dealings with BT who are right up there with some of the worst CS in the UK however Macro are in an altogether different league, IME.



Well I made contact with them today after this post and true to form the 'technology manager' put the phone down on me however I spoke with another ass manager who sounded about ten and promised to pass my complaint onto the store manager when he returns to the store on Friday, conveniently both the store manage and assistant store manager were not in the store today when I called back to report the guy who had put the phone down on me earlier in the day.

I told the guy that I would be going to TS and to my solicitor and that I wasn't going down the Sony road, I also told him that my contract with was Macro and not with Sony and that I expected Macro to do something.

The guy did however say to me that he couldn't authorise a refund or a replacement, he said that the store manager would have to do this but this guy was generally sympathetic I have to say.



Date of purchase was April 1st 2009 and the cost was £570 and I paid with a CC.

At the time of purchase I had done some research beforehand and was aware of 'issues' with some graphics cards and foolishly believed the one in this laptop top was okay because it was the 'GT' version, also the price I paid was nearly half price it had been as it was a relatively old laptop although it was brand new.

Macro were selling off a load of Sony Vaio laptops for very good prices but they were obviously old stock.

Thanks very much Paul for taking the time to reply to me and give me such great advice.

I await your reply and will update you with any response that I receive from Macro, if any,on Friday

Hello Tony,



You are quite right, the GPU is failing and whilst it can currently output via the HDMI port this won't last long and will fail imminently.



Well, I'll take your word for it as I haven't had any dealings with them except for getting mountains of their junk mail.



Is that legal? I thought that health and safety meant that there had to be a manager on site at all times? I could have got that wrong though but it does sound a little unlikely doesn't it?



Absolutely excellent news that you paid by credit card. This means that the card company are as liable as the retailer in situations such as this. If you cannot get a satisfactory response from Makro you can approach the credit card company and request a "Setion 75 refund".

The minimum you should expect to receive as a refund would be £412 so you should not accept anything less than this.

I would now send Makro a letter before action. A template can be found here:- download/letter_before_action.doc

You should download that, edit it with your details and send it to Makro via recorded delivery. Please remember to keep a copy of the letter and postal receipt.

If, after seven days they have failed to respond in the positive then you should obtain an engineers report on your laptop. For further details of this please see here:- need-an-independant-engineers-report-t62.html

There is a step by step guide available that will help you reach a positive resolution and that is here:- post13.html#p13

I hope the above helps.

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

Best wishes

Paul
The Admin Team

_________________
=======================================================
Calculate the minimum refund that you would be entitled to.
FAQ's
Why you should not accept a repair
Links to evidence
What is the Nvidia Defect?
Step by step help to getting a refund
Do you need an engineers report?
=======================================================

If you like what you see on this forum and would like to help then please post links to this forum in other forums or blogs. The more people we can help the better.


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.

Thanks Paul, I suspected as much so I'm going to buy an external HHD on the next few days in order to back of stuff before the laptop gives up the ghost.



Yeah well I'm pretty skeptical these days but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt until the end of the week.





Thanks for the above advice Paul, I can't really thank you enough mate. One small question though, do I send the LBA to the Macro store I bought the laptop from or to their head office?

The internet might be a pretty dodgy place at times but there are some really excellent people out there helping people and giving up their own free time to do so.

Kind regards.

Tony

Hello Tony,

You will need to send the LBA to the Makro head office, though you may be best giving the store a call to get the best address as you don't want it to go astray.



Thanks for that Tony, much appreciated.

Any questions please let me know,

Best wishes

Paul
The Admin Team

_________________
=======================================================
Calculate the minimum refund that you would be entitled to.
FAQ's
Why you should not accept a repair
Links to evidence
What is the Nvidia Defect?
Step by step help to getting a refund
Do you need an engineers report?
=======================================================

If you like what you see on this forum and would like to help then please post links to this forum in other forums or blogs. The more people we can help the better.


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.

Thanks again Paul,

I'll update this post as and when I have any further info.

Kind regards.

Tony

Hi Paul,

just a wee update.

Macro's assistant branch manager contacted me today and he offered to pay for Sony to inspect the laptop and take it from there regarding future repairs etc depending on what Sony say is wrong with the laptop however I pointed out to him that there is plenty of evidence on the internet regarding the Nvidia defect and that there is no repair for it. I also told him that I didn't think I would receive impartial advice from Sony so he said he would pay for the laptop to have an independent computer service company that Macro uses to give him a report on what the fault is and again, he said, that we can take things from there once he's had the report from the computer company.

I must say that I thought the response from Macro's guy was very positive and helpful (they must have sorted out their CS) so I'm taking the laptop in to them on Monday to start the ball rolling and see where that takes me.

Have to say though that I got the impression that they've been down this road before and I also think that the information on this site regarding the problems with these graphics chips helped me big time because the guy listened and made a serious effort to make me happy.

Obviously there's a bit of a way to go and my laptop may not have this Nvidia defect but I'm quite prepared to send the laptop to you Paul for a seperate independent report if the Macro one tries to blame me or my son or some other thing as I have no idea how independent this computer service company is but I'll just have to wait and see and give Macro a chance to sort things out to both mine and their satisfaction.

I'll update the thread again when I have any more info or maybe you can advise me Paul if you think this offer from Macro is reasonable and fair.

Thanks again and kind regards.

Tony

Just a small update on this guys.

I handed the laptop into Macro last Thursday and according to the guy dealing with it I should receive the tech report by Wednesday of this week.

Will post an update when I get some more info later this week, hopefully.

Thanks

Tony

Hello Tony,



Good luck with that, fingers crossed for you.

Best wishes

Paul
The Admin Team

_________________
=======================================================
Calculate the minimum refund that you would be entitled to.
FAQ's
Why you should not accept a repair
Links to evidence
What is the Nvidia Defect?
Step by step help to getting a refund
Do you need an engineers report?
=======================================================

If you like what you see on this forum and would like to help then please post links to this forum in other forums or blogs. The more people we can help the better.


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.