[SOLVED] How to get a refund from MS? 3rd Surface Book and <1 month broken again

[msnell]

I just recently RMA'd my surface book 1 after four months of having one that functions. Prior to that, I had the first one for 8 months. It's been just over a year since I got the original, counting 2-week return periods...

This third one is out of the box with a malfunctioning mini-displayport. I can't afford to keep returning the device and losing my applications, VMs, and data that I haven't backed up.

I just want my money back so I can get a different PC. Anyone have any tips/strategies for getting a return out of Microsoft?

 

[Gam3r01]

You only have a 30 day return window from original date of purchase.
You can try contacting them directly given your history of RMAs, but I doubt you will get anywhere.

 

[Solandri]

This third one is out of the box with a malfunctioning mini-displayport. I can't afford to keep returning the device and losing my applications, VMs, and data that I haven't backed up.

You can create a custom recovery partition with all your applications and user accounts set up. That's how the big vendors like Dell make their recovery partitions with their apps pre-loaded. The image used to make that recovery partition can be stored on external media. All you'd have to do then when you RMA a laptop is use the image to create a new recovery partition, restore the recovery partition, then restore your data from a backup.

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/106215-factory-recovery-create-custom-recovery-partition.html

Also, this won't help you since you seem to be over a year past initial purchase. But a lot of credit cards offer 90- or 120-day damage/theft protection on purchases. So if a particularly troublesome product should meet with an unfortunate "accident" they will refund you the purchase price. (Be sure to read the fine print of your credit card terms. Certain products and purchases are excluded from the coverage. They usually have a max coverage limit as well.)