While on the topic of customer service

I have a Toshiba Portégé A200 laptop.  I bought it four years ago because it is lightweight, had decent horsepower for the era, and, while expensive at over £700, was reasonably priced for a machine of its class.

Every year so far it has had to have a new screen, actually more often than every year.  Every year, about 1cm in from the left hand margin, vertical lines appear, starting as a single line and gradually multiplying.  And, every year, the screen has been replaced under warranty.  But this is like saying that the screen is a consumable, just like a car engine air or oil filter! 

The first year Toshiba did this themselves.  Subsequently I've been very pleased with Topaz Support, who have done many repairs to it, including a new keyboard, battery, power supply, fan, motherboard, hard disk, 4 new screens (I am losing count!), a new screen wiring harness, etc.

The service I've received from Topaz and Toshiba has been unfailingly cheerful, helpful, understanding of my needs, and top quality.  Unfortunately Louise at Topaz now recognises my name!  That should not be right!  I really ought not to know her so well!  

Of course the screen has broken again.  I closed the lid at 3pm yesterday.  I opened it again at 7pm and the dreaded vertical lines were there.  So I called Topaz this morning.  "Hi Louise, it's Tim Trent."  I almost heard her think "Oh no, not the screen again!"  I'm sure I did.

The upshot is that I met a very nice man at Toshiba, Ian.  He met my expectations very well.  Quite reasonably we are dealing with a 4 year old laptop whose warrantky expired a year ago, almost tothe day, and his authority level says "I cannot authorise a warranty repair at my level," a thing I understand well, but he has made sympathetic noises while not committing Toshiba in any way, and escalated the matter to head office.  He agrees that he understands my concerns, and has made me feel content that the call has been well handled.

Of course, this does not yet mend my laptop!  The thing is, this is "not a known problem" in the Toshiba known problems list.  And the machine is, naturally, obsolete.  But I know the problem well enough to be on first name terms with Louise at Topaz over it, and it repeats with awful monotonous regularity.

To me this means that Toshiba should at least be interested.  I hope they are.  I'll let you know.

Do you have the same model and does it do the same thing to you, too?