LG Terrible Customer Support, Visa Extended Warranty Is A Epic Fail!

Worst thing ever...

A year and 3 months ago I bought a laptop. It was a LG R500 with a 8600M GT GPU. I bought it at Futureshop and paid $1599 at the time of purchase, it was decent. I usually don't buy LG because they aren't known for quality, but I have to say it was pretty good. Just a year and 2 months later the laptop wouldn't turn on!. The thing looks brand new, I take very good care of it and it turned on, but no screen/back light and no hard drive noise, no nothing, just lights and fans. My diagnosis after a few mins, dead motherboard/GPU.

I search the net and find out the G84/86/8600M's are all faulty GPU's. I wasn't too worried since my LG warranty has ended but I bought the laptop on visa which gave me a extended 2 year warranty. So off to the warranty I go, Visa contacts LG and LG then says I have to get it professionally diagnosed they want papers. So I go get it diagnosed at the stupid geek squad crap. They charge me 80$ which LG will NOT cover. So then they say the same thing, failed motherboard/GPU. I go back to Visa/LG and then LG says, I need to pay for shipping and the special shipping box as well as labour (400$) and they will only replace it with the 8600M GT again, and if they repair it my remaining warranty voids, it also may take up to 2 months.

I can't go without having a computer for 2 months, so I bought another laptop (good one, MSI barebones custom). Now ive layed down 1599$ for that old LG laptop thats dead and 1700$ for the new one. I showed Visa how the 8600M GT's are faulty and they informed LG, LG refuses to take this to truth, saying that they use the best quality parts and that the GPU isn't faulty. So then we ask for just 600$ from LG, the part to repair is quoted from them at 800$. So were asking for 600$ and just forget about everything, they deny.

LG got us no where, whats this BS about paying for labor and shipping!.. And the worst part is you have to pay everything up front and then they would reimburse you. So what I would pay another 800$(for part)+400$(for shipping/labour) then months later only get 800$ back and find my laptop dead in another year from the faulty GPU!? So yea, spend 400$ to extend the life 1 year. Useless.

I went into visa explaining how useless their system is LG wont co-operate, visas warranty isn't getting me no where either. So then Visa tells me to file a claim. I filed a claim, asking for 600$-1200$ for covering the laptop. I explained how I needed the laptop for schoolwork and simply you cant do work at a university/school without a computer for 2 months thats ridicolous so I bought a new laptop.

After I filed the claim I waited about 3 weeks. Finally I hear from them a day ago, my claim gets DENIED!. They say they are unable to co-operate with my claim because I stated I use it for work, and they do not cover commercial business use. I'm thinking, omg, its not a business I put SCHOOL WORK! Can they not read!? So I contacted Visa once again and they want me to file another claim making it more clear.

I'm really getting choked with this whole situation, LG is useless and Visa's extended warranty isn't any better. If nothing comes out of this I'm gonna be choked and just end up pawning off all the laptops working pieces on the internet, C2D, RAM, HD.etc.

Thoughts? Any ideas? I can't let them get away, the guy at Visa said most people don't bother to file a claim. To me it sounds pretty much like they are offering this extended warranty and then when the you know what hits the fan they make it as difficult as they can to not spend a dime on you.

You pretty much hit the nail on the head with your conclusion. Its a matter of making it such a pain in the butt for you that you wouldn't want to use it.

This is one of those situations where you have to spend money to get a lawyer to write them a letter to scare them and teach them a lesson.

I really don't know the history regarding G84/86/8600M's are all faulty GPU's

But if it were true & I was in your shoes, I'd go to Yahoo Domains and for $1.99 you can buy lgnotebookssuck.com (it's available!)

Spend another few bucks for hosting and then put up a page specifically for your problem, if enough people have the same issue, if you want revenge; find someone on your campus to help you file a class action lawsuit. See how fast LG fixes your broken laptop then.

Silversinksam said:

I really don't know the history regarding G84/86/8600M's are all faulty GPU's

But if it were true & I was in your shoes, I'd go to Yahoo Domains and for $1.99 you can buy lgnotebookssuck.com (it's available!)

Spend another few bucks for hosting and then put up a page specifically for your problem, if enough people have the same issue, if you want revenge; find someone on your campus to help you file a class action lawsuit. See how fast LG fixes your broken laptop then.

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Well, Im gonna see how far I get with this written thing. If that don't work out sure Ill do that. Ill register it, I needa buy a domain anyways some time soon for my portfolio homepage why not also buy that while im at it.

I don't think I would go as far as filing a lawsuit that costs money and alot of time. However, Ill complain, get people with the same problem to harass and spam LG. As for the GPUs being faulty the problem is said that the chips were manufactured too flexible/maluable and then over time from heat and cooling they form cracks and then the connection is lost. Like seriously my LG laptop is in mint condition, never left the house. No scratches, nothing, its flawless and the GPUs just dead.

Just search faulty nvidia 8600 on google, you'll see tons, Dell replace them for free, a buddy of mine has gone through 3 motherboards in his M17xx Dell in the last year.

Most companies are addressing this with either just replacing it, or offering to give you a trade in on a laptop with the 9600M GT. It wont really plague people who just use it for web browsing because that wont heat the gpu up enough. Its the heating and cooling temperature changes that cause the problem, and when you use 3D apps and stuff or play games, that for sure will heat it up.

Another thing is who to blame, should I be blaming LG for not informing their customers about this problem or not accepting this serious issue. The LG warranty (1 year) was passed by a couple months when the laptop died. So really LG was just terrible customer support. I guess then I should be blaming Visa because they were taking care of the extended warranty where they denied my claim and make it ridicolous to get anything out of this.

Or are both Visa and LG to blame.

I could cheeze Visa off by informing others that the gold card that gives you the extended warranty is nothing but BS. Really its tough, and it sucks.

Im not even that upset about the money, im more upset about how ridicolous this is. I only bought the laptop with visa because the extended warranty.

Oh well, at least I have a cool looking door stop, it works as a paper weight too.

And Nvidia does slightly adress the situation, http://www.nvidia.com/object/io_1215037160521.html

+ 1 for ATI for no GPU messups.

Not sure this is an LG issue entirely. I have an LG Plasma and one of the main boards went out about 2 weeks after the warranty (2 year) expired. They sent a tech to my house and fixed it at no charge anyway..............

As a side note, in the US LG makes most of the HP/Compaq laptops. LG laptops are mostly only available in Canada (in North America) due to non-compete agreements. HP makes very few of the products they sell. The company I work for makes enterprise networking equipment for HP and we actually contract out the actual build to a couple of companies in China...................