Solicitation of real-world experience: On-site repair

[zhenya]

I play System Administrator for our small office of about 30 machines, most of which are laptops. We have a smattering of all brands, because until recently, nobody was really managing this stuff, and we tend to buy 1 or 2 machines at a time. Anyhow, the bulk of our laptops are currently Dell's. Now that I have a say in the matter I have been moving us towards Thinkpads - 3 introduced so far! Anyhow, I'll say that the one thing that Dell does very well is warranty repairs. Anything that has needed repair over the years, the part has either been here the next morning, or a technician was there with the part within 24 hours. Thus far, the only repair I've needed for a Thinkpad was a replacement hard disk, which was handled very well. I have purchased extended warranties with all of our machines, but have no practical experience with the on-site warranty process so far. What has been your experience - good or bad - with your onsite warranty? As we do pay a premium over Dell for these machines, I may have some explaining to do if we find out the hard way that the warranty isn't all it's cracked up to be. Comments appreciated!

[simms]

Onsite is amazing. I wouldn't buy a TP without one.

I had a mobo die on me, and they got my hour in my hands 2 hours after the call. Tech came in next day to fix it.

Another time I had the wrong mobo. Part was delayed a day because it was out of stock, but again, tech was there the next day.

Lastly, Fingerprint wasn't really working. Next day service, on time.

[invictus]

The on-site experiences that I've been part of have been great. At work where I'm one of the PC Technicians I've had one motherboard replaced for a T42 and one for a T43 and both were replaced on-site within 24 hours after I called them in. Also, I had a user who broke a key on their keyboard on their T43 and was sent a new keyboard and arrived the next day.

I can't give enough praise about the Onsite repair service...

- Jon