I always had my doubts about taking anything in for repair to Noel Leeming, I had heard generally bad reports but had purchased to laptops in a Xmas day online deal that seemed to be great value for money. Twenty-one months later the first had a failure, a bit of research showed it was a motherboard fault that was common to the particular HP model, and I was really impressed that Noel Leeming accepted the claim under the Consumer Gurantees Act (it was out of warranty) and ten days later the repaired laptop came back from HP with a new motherboard. I was delighted with the service I got from Noel Leeming and told quite a few people about how they had surprised me with their good service. This was particularly so because they had been selling someone an extended warranty while I was making the claim, a warranty that sold people the rights they already had and was in effect a waste of their money. Three months later the second laptop develops a similar fault. The shop again took the details and I advised it was a common fault with the model, and reminded them how good they had been fixing the first laptop. A day later I got a call to say that HP would not fix a laptop that was two years old. I reminded Noel Leeming that was irrelevant under the Consumer Guarantees Act, there was nothing in the act that time bound a request to fix a manufacturing fault. I also reminded them it didn't matter what HP said, it was the retailer not the manufacturer who has the obligation to fix the fault, if they had to play HP then that cost couldn't be passed back to me, I didn't actually care what HP thought. They did send it to HP and HP agreed it was a manufacturing fault and agreed to repair it. Now overall Noel Leeming did a good job here, but why one backroom guy took it on himself to try and suggest I was wrong and drop the request is beyond me. HP to their credit made the assessment it was a fault that they would repair, so if the retailer hadn't made the call I'd have got the repaired laptop and been totally happy with the experience. I know retailers make money selling extended warranties to uninformed customers, but why buy an argument before you know what the manufacturer is going to say? I would have taken a claim to the small claims tribunal in any case as the position of the retailer to try and pass responsibility to the manufacturer is not how the law works. It's a pity that they tired the "it's two years old and out of warranty approach" but at least in the end I got both laptops repaired at no cost to me.
