Support Policies and Tablet PCs
Friday, 28 February 2003
Posted by austin in: Technology, trackback
I sent my Tablet PC off for repair on Thursday. I like my Tablet PC a lot, but I highly recommend buying an “extended care” warranty if it’s available. Tablet PC manufacturers (I can speak specifically toward HP, since I’m using the Compaq TC1000) haven’t yet figured out the best way to handle drops.
I dropped the TC1000 off the couch and the top layer was scratched. When I called HP support about this, the initial quote was a minimum of CDN $1,200 (the cost of replacing the entire LCD assembly). I paid about $2,800 for the device, and HP wanted 40% of the cost to repair a scratch. Right. PalmOS devices have typically been about CDN $150 to repair the screen. I can’t find the details on Sony NR-70V screen, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s similar. I bought the NR-70V last May for about CDN $1,100. To me, the proper cost would be about 2 times the cost of repairing a PalmOS device (call it CDN $375)—the same cost ratio. It’s costing me about that much to have the TC1000 repaired anyway, but the initial quote was just insane.
What bothers me most about the cost of support repairs is that in many cases, the manufacturer can then repair parts with lesser damage (like the scratch on my tablet PC) and then use the repaired part in future repairs. My LCD wasn’t broken; this was the top layer of plastic or glass on the TC1000. In other words, for a CDN $170 piece of equipment, I may have been charged CDN $1,200. I’m not saying that HP would have done this, and they’ve worked wonderfully with me on this to reduce the cost significantly, but I had to work harder on this than I should have. This also would have been avoided with the Compaq “CarePaq” (their name for the insurance/warranty available which allows for one repair per year for three years). Unfortunately, I don’t think that it was available when I bought the device. I will get it, but it still annoys me how much I had to work to get this repaired. (It’s also not as good as the Dell plan that I have, which is three years of on-site service.)
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