Goochie

I managed to drop one of our laptops at the weekendand as a result it now doesnt work - "the lights are on but no body is at home"

So seeing as I've been a customer of my insurer's for 10 years and not once made a cliam I thought I'd give them a call and see what the story was with making a claim.

First snag was that I'm listed as a "new customer" because I diddnt pay the renewall, I opted to start a new policy because that way I could get 12 months for the price of 9 - this means my claim has to be dealt with by a special team

After a lot of interogation, questions rephrased to try and catch me out, warnings of taped conversations etc. they have yet to decide if they want to repair it or replace it.

I have zero excess and am covered under the "home entertainment" part of the policy.

The annoying thing isnt the way they treat you like a fraudster, its the way their TV ads say they dont quibble over a claim, replace new for old etc.

I'm a little reluctant to hand over my machine to a repair shop as I've read stories about these places retrieving internet banking details etc. from hard drives - I wouldnt let a stranger look through my bank statments and paper copies of utility bills so why should I let them browse my hard drive!? (no I dont have any illegal porn on there )

Its the company with the red phone logo

TKW

Keep the disk drive before giving it away.

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piv34uk

After my near fatal accident i swore i would never use DL again

Phil

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ScoobyChris

Agreed, if it's just a hardware repair, take out the hard disk before you give it to them.

Chris

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robmawer

Why would you save your internet banking details on your hard drive anyway? You wouldn't write your PIN on the back of your bank card would you?


Rob.

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WW_VRS

My work laptop has nothing untoward on it, and is kept legit on all accounts to the best of my ability/knowledge.

If I repair a machine for a mate, I always make it clear that although I wont copy any 'dodgy' stuff, if I do any disk related stuff I will come across things that may be private to a varying degree. This has happened a few times.. I used to 'house visit' to repair stuff, and when that happened I always preferred to have the owner of the machine present to avoid problems later on.

Only catch in your situation could be that they expect the machine to have a HDD with OS on it, or send it back to you, so it's worth checking.

Might be worth copying the files of the drive using a different laptop or a USB(2) -> 2.5" HDD lead. Works well

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Goochie

No, I havent saved any bank log-in details on there but I do have emails from companies that state my password for utility accounts etc.

I had considered removing the HD before sending it to them but if its the HD that is bust it kind of defeats the object of the repair

Kaiserb_uk

What's the worst that could happen, someone pays your gas bill?

robmawer

Depends what's on the login - if it's for accessing paperless billing, it would allow someone to print off a copy of a recent utility bill. This could then be used as part of identity fraud...


Rob.

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Makefish

.........where is it then?

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mluton

Drop it again and break it good time this time round.

As above i would remove the HDD.

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Gwilo

don't you have a spare laptop drive lying around with a vanilla installation?

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Goochie

Oh, now let me think about it....................

Gwilo

i could fish out a jiffy bag and pop a 60gb with linux on .........
depends if your laptop is sata or the older pata stuff

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ScoobyChris

Most of it's hosted at his website www.philsbigboys.com

HTH

Chris

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Holding up the traffic in a little Italian..........

Goochie

I dont have any illegal porn.

And its on a USB hard drive.

heresmo

This is a long shot, but if a repair might compromise your personal data, then there must be something in the Data Privacy Act that should prevent that. After all, it's pretty pointless that companies and individuals take great pains to preserve privacy if it could all be blown by a repair because an insurance co decides not to replace a laptop outright.

If they do replace it, that might make the existing laptop their property, so perhaps just return the outer case, otherwise it defeats the point of your quandary of course.

Dunno - just thinking out loud.

Mo

Tom_vRS

I think the bottom line is that Phil doesn't want them messing about repairing a laptop when it would be very easy for them to just send him a cheque so he can buy a new one.

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Goochie

I'd be happy with vouchers TBH.