Most retail computers are sold with a 1 year warranty, where you have an option to buy an extended warranty. Retail computers are typically built to survive the typical "usable life" of 3-5 years. The manufacturers have no way of knowing whether or not the consumer is going to buy the extended warranty, so trying to manipulate failure rates is a pointless gamble to them.
This thread reminds me of the funniest day I ever had at work. A guy comes in complaining about a "noise" in his engine compartment. The car is just out of warranty. He pays to have the "noise" diagnosed. After being told his car needed an engine, he immediately asked for the phone number for Ford Motor Company's legal department. When asked why he needed the number, he stated that he intended to sue Ford Motor Company for intentionally building his car with a faulty engine. Several days and a few phone calls later, he returns. The Ford Motor Company engineering rep meets him at the shop to discuss his "problem". The man got a new engine at no cost, as per Ford Motor Company's own policies that had been in place for nearly 2 decades, but at the same time was shown that a little intelligence and patience go a lot further that attempting to file BS lawsuits.
Now, I said all that to say this. Electronics, as well as all mass produced goods, will in fact fail at some point. Screaming lawsuit every time a product fails serves no purpose other than to make you look ignorant/greedy. Just because YOU experience a failure shortly after your product warranty expires, does not mean it's a common problem or a manufacturer defect of any sort exists. Sometimes, *** just happens. Over the weekend, my house A/C failed. Should I be able to sue the manufacturer of my A/C unit because of a failure? Unless you can prove, beyond any reasonable doubt that the failure occurred due to manufacturing defect of some sort, as well as the manufacturer having prior knowledge of failures, you're wasting your time even thinking about a lawsuit. Hell, I'd like to sue Asus over the 6 previous motherboards I bought from them failing....what's the odds that 4, K7V133 boards would fail within a 60day period? How about a K7M that Asus knew had a faulty Southbridge? Or K8V-X with it's known faulty IDE controller chip?
rako71 :
Actually for class action suits it doesn't matter the warranty period. Its based on the useful life of the product. Most laptop are expected to last 3-5 years. if HP know that their system are failing before that time because of a defect in design or part then they are on the hook for it. HP actually has several class actions pending for just that reason.
The Xbox 360 ring of death is a perfect example. A design flaw meant a large number of system would die within the usefully life of the system but after the warranty period. MS jumped on it and was willing to fix them, before the class actions was ratified.
You also have to show that a significant number of consumers are effected, as well as showing relation of the instances. Several years ago, Dell was the subject of a class-action suit in which Dell Dimension 4600 power supplies were failing at 13-15months for consumers with 1yr warranty and within 1-3 months of warranty end for consumers who bought the extended warranties. I tried to find it...but apparently Dell spends more time dealing with class-action suits over their sub-par quality garbage that there's too many results on Google. But, basically, if the problem is known to exist and knowledge of such can be proven, you can get around the other requirements for class-action status in some courts, but you'll still have to show a negative impact to consumers.
Rook_B :
Yes there is. This should be all the information you need.
www.hpelitedesktopsettlement.com
His particular model doesn't fall under that class-action settlement as it pertains to 8 specific "Pavilion Elite" models, which are listed on the site.
Welcome to the Settlement Website for Kent v. Hewlett Packard Company, Case No. C 09-05341 JF. This website provides information about the class action settlement involving certain HP Pavilion Elite desktop computers. On April 15, 2011, the Court gave preliminary approval to the settlement and certified a settlement class of individual and entity end-users who purchased, leased, received as a gift or otherwise acquired in the United States an HP Pavilion Elite desktop computer model e9150t, e9180f, e9180t, m9600t, m9650f, e9280f, e9280t or e9290f.
HP model # P6116FPC is not listed.
climb1028 :
I would posit that anybody who gets on these forums and states "things break, get over it", "hp held up their end of the warranty", etc... is probably a plant from the company itself.
That post is just pure ignorance....I've never had the first problem with an HP product. Legally, unless YOU can prove wrong-doing on HP's part, they have held up their end of the warranty contract. In the case of masegl53, he started experiencing problems prior to his warranty expiration, yet apparently failed to contact HP prior to the expiration. That isn't HP's faulty....that was masegl53's own fault.
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