I’m a bit behind on writing this up, but just as I sometimes call out bad customer service it’s also worth highlighting good experiences.

TL;DR

John Lewis gave me a two year warranty on my Chromebook, which meant that when the battery died I was able to get it fixed.

Background

When I bought my Chromebook back in December 2012 I got it from John Lewis. Partly this was because I had a ton of John Lewis vouchers (that I generally use for online grocery shopping at Waitrose), and partly getting it delivered to my local Waitrose was going to be more convenient that hanging around at home for postal delivery.

Since I got my Lenovo X230 the Chromebook has been mostly languishing under my bed, occasionally being pulled out when I need something with a keyboard. Around November last year I noticed that the battery was flat, which I thought was just down to having not plugged it in properly. Sadly next time I used the Chromebook it was clear that the battery wasn’t charging. I tried various software things I found online to attempt to revive the battery, but nothing worked. It seemed that the battery (or charging circuit) would need to be replaced.

Had I been able to find a new battery easily I’d have probably fixed it myself, even though they’re built in rather than removable, but that wasn’t an option.

2yr warranty to the rescue

Some checking revealed that I had until Christmas 2014 on the two year warranty, so I called the John Lewis help line, and was promised a call back the next day by their technical support people. That didn’t happen, but my second attempt went much better and collection of the broken Chromebook was arranged. On the day promised (and with a text telling me the hour of collection[1]) DPD[2] arrived with a carton and packing material to take it away.

A little over a week later I got an email telling me it was on the way back to me, and once again I was told which hour the parcel would arrive. It came back with a job ticket saying the battery had been replaced[3], and was working perfectly. I’d done a factory reset and wipe before sending it off, but as most of the state is stored in the cloud it only took moments to get back to fully functional.

Conclusion

Since John Lewis price match, and offer a two year warranty on things like this I should probably try to use them more often. If it wasn’t for the extra year of warranty my Chromebook would now be stranded in the house where it could be run from its power supply.

Notes

[1] The texts identified themselves as coming from AppleRepair.
[2] Some of the whining I see online would suggest that DPD are as bad as CShityLink were, which isn’t my experience at all. I love the fact that I get an email early in the day with a one hour delivery window (so I know when it’s safe to walk the dog and pop down the road to the local store), and they’ve never let me down.
[3] At the time of arranging the repair there had been some muttering about batteries not being covered by the warranty, but this wasn’t an issue in the end (and what exactly are customers supposed to do about things that have batteries built in anyway?).