Invalidated warranty through no misuse?

[juliab101]

Hi and apologies in advance for the long post.

I have a Sony VAIO E-series laptop which has lasted me almost 3 years, bought with an extended 3-year warranty. Over the years, a couple of minor faults developed:

1) the headphone socket does not work. Not really an issue as I use a sound card anyway, but I have no idea how or when it happened, one day when I was travelling wihtout the sound card I just tried to plug headphones in and... nothing.
2) the screen has a few patchy bits on it. Like broken pixels. It's not really noticeable unless the screen is displaying something quite dark. I guess this just sort of happens sometimes, like a black blob on a phone screen that slowly grows.
3) This is the worst problem. The laptop will not always recognise the charger. I wasn't sure if it was a problem with the port or the charger or even the battery, but after about 5 minutes of fiddling around with the charger's connection the laptop will start to charge. So all fine as long as you NEVER MOVE IT when it has started to charge. Otherwise the fiddling will become a necessity again.

Anyway, I sent my laptop off to Sony with about a month left off warranty - phew! But... they claimed that it was 'Physical damage', which 'voided the warranty'. Soo I'd have to pay £600 to fix it, as unfortunately the screen and the motherboard would need to be replaced. If I wanted my laptop returned unrepaired, I'd have to pay £63. Now being a student I definitely cannot afford these kind of things, but why should I have to when the faults are through no misuse? It seems to me that the laptop was not manufactured allowing for a consumer's reasonable use.

I have of course emailed, phoned and been phoned by many different customer service advisors... I keep getting passed over to the lovely people at Flextronics (the repair company) who can only tell me that it has been concluded as a physical damage issue. The last woman I spoke to said that she 'wasn't sure' why she had been asked to speak to me 'when it was clearly something that Sony needed to deal with'. Fair enough.

Has anyone else dealt with this kind of issues? Is there any way I can escalate my case to be reviewed by someone who actually works for Sony?? Please do get in touch.

Thanks for reading.