I have a part time business selling new and use notebooks, PCs and other gadgets in my free time. And like most retail business, I provide after sales service for my customers in case their products become faulty or have any kind of trouble. Usually if it's under warranty, I would fix it for free. Sometimes for special cases though I would still fix it for a minimal fee even if it's out of warranty.
Recently I had one case where my customer's laptop had a faulty USB 3.0 port and the warranty had just lapsed for about a month. I called Dell to enquire whether they could make an exception for my case but sadly Dell would have nothing of it. Later they sent me a parts replacement quotation for RM249 and further revised upwards to RM4200 for the motherboard replace. With that price I might as well buy a brand new laptop for my friend.
So the moral of the story here, always keep in mind when your hardware warranty expires. If you find anything faulty, anything at all, quickly report it to the vendor (like me) so that they can get it fixed for free under the warranty (usually 1 year). While I'm not really responsible for the faulty notebook since it's out of warranty, I still feel somewhat guilty since it only just expires. It's like Dell purposely build their laptop to break down straight away after the warranty passes. Maybe this is just a one off case but it's enough to make me not buy anything laptop from Dell again.
