I bought a Desktop from Dell in June 2019 and purchased a 4 year comprehensive warranty.
This Desktop was replaced two weeks ago but Dell insists they cannot sell me a new extended warranty for it. “We are sorry to inform you that the support contract on this Inspiron Computer cannot be extended as it is beyond serviceable life.”
They have transferred the old warranty which means it will run out in June 2023.
This seems mean and tricky especially as I have offered to pay for an extended warranty.
Has anyone had similar experience with Dell or other replacements provided under warranty that are then treated as though they are old products?
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Welcome to the Community @maryrosomane
Sometimes warranty replacement, as with the original product gets beyond ‘serviceable life’ being no longer sold or supported. Warranty service might be a unit replacement since no individual parts are stocked after a time, so replacements, sometimes refurbs, are stocked to a statistical level.
As technology moves ahead it is common for warranties to have sunset dates. It is up to the manufacturer regarding stocking spares for a product that is now about 4 generations old already.
A basic warranty was a condition of sale but an extended warranty is an optional offering that becomes a business case for Dell; eg how long to they keep spares just in case. If your replacement desktop (2019 technology) should fail and was warranted say for an additional 2 years (to 2025) beyond the basic warranty Dell would need an unknown stock of old technology spares or replacement units just in case.
That is impractical for a business beyond a certain lifetime noting a 2019 desktop is reaching ‘mid-life’ in 2022. BTW, I have 2 x 2019 desktops and am largely a DIY white box (non-branded) type and know while desktops can soldier on as piece by piece needs replacement or upbringing, those pieces installed vs what is on the market change regularly. eg. main board standards and features, CPU sockets, memory types, and so on.
In summary you will find it common that any supplier will have an end date beyond which they will decline to offer additional support. An extended warranty is a product as is the original desktop, and as they replace old desktops from sale with newer models they have elected to keep their extended warranty ‘products’ aligned with their current products.
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Hi @maryrosomane, welcome to the community.
Warranties are offered at the time of sale. When something is replaced under warranty (or the consumer guarantee under the Australian Consumer Law), the warranty period does not get reset to the day of the replacement, but remains from the date of the original sale. This is why they transferred the residual of the extended warranty across to the replacement desktop.
If Dell had allowed you to purchase an extended warranty, in effect it is changing the start of the warranty date to the date of replacement. If they allow this, they would then have to allow extended warranties to be purchased anytime after the sale and could result in warranties being in perpetuity.
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