The Nvidia Defect Forum

OK, so after receiving a positive engineers report a couple of weeks back confirming that my laptop does indeed contain the nvidia defect I sent the report off to the Staples Head Office.
They then contacted me asking me to send them a copy of the original purchase receipt as proof of purchase. I informed them that the receipt is too faded and although it is possible to read it in person any attempt to photocopy / scan it would proove unsuccessful.
They then asked me to take the receipt into my local store and see if they were able to get a copy of it faxed over to head office. I did this but just as I thought the local store was also unable to take a copy of the receipt.
The local store then offered to look back through their till system to see if they could pull a copy of the receipt, but unfortunately their till system only goes back to January 2008 and the laptop was purchased in December 2006.
The local store then told me that they would contact head office as they would definately have a copy of the receipt (at this point I'm thinking OK, so why then have head office asked me to produce a copy of the receipt if they have one themselves???)
Anyway, I contacted my local store late last week to see if they'd gotten anywhere with tracking the receipt down. The store manager told me that they'd not found anything yet and that it could take up to two weeks for them to find it.
Today, I contacted head office to ask them what was going on and the person I spoke to on the phone said there's no record of my local store asking them to produce a copy of the receipt, and to make matters worse, he told me that head office don't keep copies of receipts anyway. He then told me that he's going to speak to his colleagues and he'll phone me back early next week.

Basically I get the distinct impression that Staples either don't know how to, or are simply reluctant to deal with this issue.

This is starting to annoy me a little bit really as it seems that Staples are shirking their responsibilities as a retailer. What should I be doing now to speed things up and get a result?

Staples have a good record in this matter , so I would suggest that you treat this as a bit of a ' cock up' ......

Can you look through your bank / credit card records to provide a alternative proof of purchase ?

If the local Staples can read the receipt then ask if they will copy /re write the details and fax / email / post it to head office.

Finally
A good photographer or a well versed canner operator ' should ' be able to reproduce as good as an original copy with top rate equipment.

as I stated , Staples have sorted out problems for at least 4 / 6 members of this site with out to much fuss, so give them another try ......

Ralph

Hello Jim,

The fact that the receipt is faded is not your problem.

Receipts do fade over time, but if it is unreadable then that is not your problem.

If you can still make out some of the details then that is good enough if you ask me.

You cannot be held responsible for the fact that the ink on the paper has faded, so if that document is all you have then they will have to accept it.

You stated that it could be read in person but was not good enough to be faxed. Well, if that is the case then all you would have to do is to show it to a manager at one of their stores.

If they try insisting on a faxed copy then they are simply behaving awkwardly and you should advise then that as far as you are concerned you have provided to an official of their company sight of proof of purchase.

If they are to refund you or replace the laptop then they can keep the receipt anyway so why they want a faxed copy is beyond me.

Like Ralphy says, it is probably a cock up or an over zealous office worker new in the job.

I would give them a call back and tell them that the best you can do is to show the receipt to one of their officials. You should also tell them that if they refuse to accept this then you will have no option but to proceed straight to litigation.

Start off with the above and see what they say and then please let me know and I will advise further.

Good luck and best wishes

Paul
The Admin Team

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OK, I've finally managed to get the paperwork sorted and I've had the following response from Staples:



I'm not sure whether I should be happy with this offer because if I were to go into the store and purchase a laptop of similar spec to the defective one, even with the discount that's been offered, we're probably still going to have to be paying £150 - £200.
My arguement here is that if the laptop had not been defective in the first place my friend would still have a perfectly functional laptop without having to have shelled out anymore cash.
In your opinion, should we accept this offer or is there something else I should be doing in order to get Staples to produce a better offer?

How much was the laptop originally?

You state it was purchased December 2006 - when did it fail?

If you let us know we can calculate whether or not it's a reasonable offer.

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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.

The original purchase price was £499

My friend brought that laptop round for me to fix on the 24th of March this year so I assume it must have failed around about that time, maybe a few days before the 24th

Ok then

Working on a laptop lasting for an average of 5 years(60 months).
- At a purchase price of £499 this works out at £8.32 per month
- They had the laptop for 39 months (Dec 06 to March 10) - 39 * £8.32 = £324.48

Therefore the residual value of the laptop is £499 - £324 = £175

£200 is therefore a fair offer from Staples - particularly as they're adding the cost of the report on top.

It would be worth seeing if they're willing to offer this as all cash rather than store credit though.

_________________
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.

Having said that, I think it may well have started to fail sometime before that, because they only brought it round to me because it had started to become somewhat slow and they just wanted it to be rebuilt software-wise.
But they did tell me that the wireless had failed on it quite sometime before but they'd just reverted to using a USB wireless stick

OK, thanks for your reply, I shall let my friend know the result and I'll take it from there

I checked with Staples and unfortunately they are only willing to offer the £200 as a part discount and not as cash.

Still, it is definately better than being offered nothing at all