Lenovo G575 Hinge Snapped Off

[Flame_Alex]

Hello to whoever reads this,

I purchased my G575 laptop in the Black Friday sale for $180, great deal! However, after about 4-5 months of normal use and great care, the hinges started to force a separation between the bottom and top cases. This also resulted in the screen being at a slight angle. A few days later, a portion of the laptop case broke off, the hinge is now completely exposed, and I fear that the same might happen to the other end. After doing some research I realized that this is a problem not limited to just my laptop. My question is, where should I send it to to be fixed? Will there be any charge to me since this would be the manufacturer's error? Please help, as I have enjoyed this laptop so far, and honestly don't want to go to a different brand of laptop.

Regards, 

Alex

[topmahof Community Moderator]

Hi Alex and welcome to the community,

You probably should have made the call when it first started happening.  Broken plastics are hard to get covered under warranty.

Sometimes the screws work loose on the bottom corners of the case and the screen starts to come loose. Sometimes, it's a matter of just tightening up the screws.  Look on the bottom corners.  Are the screws still there?  Are they loose?

Put a call in to service and see what they say.

Let us know what happens.

Dave

[project7832]

Yeah.... how strange..... could this be intended? lol

I also purchased the G575 laptop on Black Friday.  It did look like a darn good deal.. Until I found out that it had one one ram slot and one speaker... The bestbuy website nor Lenovo listed it having only 1 ram slot and 1 speaker.  After learning this I had a little bit of buyer's remorse.

Fastforward 6 months--

Just yeterday the hinge located on the right side of my laptop started separating the bottom and lower case making awful plastic popping sounds...

Eventually I found out that the screw was missing.  I then put in a new screw and that failed. The screw just kept on turning and turning. Why? because the plastic retainer that it screwed into on the uppercase broke when the first screw went missing/fell out or popped out.

Here's a picture of the lower and bottom case separating.

Okay, so the next logical step was to take a look at my warranty to see if Lenovo will fix it for free.  To my dismay I saw this........

 [IMG]http://i48.tinypic.com/352me7c.jpg[/IMG]

Apparently....... only in the Americas there is a 90-day limited warranty on hinges and plastic. I used great care when handling my laptop and yet it broke.  It seems that Lenovo is aware of the inferior hinges and plastic so instead of reingineering or modifying them, they just use the same flawed model and design and attach a clause in the warranty to not cover them. lol great business motto.

So at the end of the day this great Black Friday deal was a farcry from great and I have a laptop that is breaking, missing a speaker and ram slot. Wow! Gee wiz I must be lucky to have waited outside for 12 hours for this amazing deal.

I would like to know if it will be a worthwhile endeavor to contact customer service.  The warranty that I have clearly states hinges and plastic are not covered. There is absolutely no way I will pay for the repair.  It would probably cost more than the $180 I paid for the unit itself.

Mod edit:  Converted pic to link per forum rule:  50k limit on pics.

[topmahof Community Moderator]

Hi project7832,

It's tough to get plastics covered even if it was covered under warranty.

There's threads around here where plastics weren't covered even though there weren't any exclusions in the warranty.

If you feel energetic, you could try to fix it yourself.  There are parts around. Here is one source.  

Dave 

[Flame_Alex]

@Project7832, Not sure whether to be glad I'm not the only one having these problems...

After posting this thread I spent a few days tinkering around, and much like the poster above, nothing worked.  So I'm just wondering if this is really worthwhile to try and fix or not.

Also, I noticed that the link you posted @topmahof is for the top plastic covering of the laptop, while this is partly what is needed, the actual holes the screws go in on the hinges are basically ruined.  The screws will either not go in, or not stay in for very long. So would this also be considered under the 1-Year warranty since it also has problems with the actual laptop itself. In addition to that, could this happen to the other areas on the laptop?

[topmahof Community Moderator]

Hi Flame_Alex,

The way it reads is that the hinges and plastics aren't covered.

All the parts to fix it can be found on ebay.  Everything needs to be taken apart to replace the parts.  If you've never done something like this, it can be daunting.  Patience is needed, but it can be done.  

Dave

[Flame_Alex]

So what you're saying is that even though this is a known problem with many Lenovo laptops, since it is not under the 90 day warranty there is nothing Lenovo can do? 

If that is a case then how much would this cost to send it in for Lenovo to repair at full price? I've callled Customer Support, but they are really.... useless, on this matter. 

~Alex

[topmahof Community Moderator]

Hi Alex,

Even if it was within 90 days, it would still be tough to get plastics covered  under warranty.  Trying to get warranty to cover something when the warranty is expired would be even tougher.

Like the member posted above, it would probably cost more for Lenovo to fix it than you paid for the laptop.  How about a local computer repair shop? Are there any around that you feel you can trust?  

There are used parts for these on ebay.  A new base plastic looks like it will cost over 100 bucks.  Used about 30.

Dave

[PtrkLnk]

I have a freind that has the exact same thing on the same laptop. The inside of the hing broke off form the laptop base because of a design flaw were the screw bases are to thin.

Lenovo pretty much said to him that it was not covered under warenty and wanted to charge twice as much as the laptop costed in the first place.

I took it apart and found out that the hing plates and screw posts had broken off of the plastic base.

I bought a thing of epoxy just like this. I mixed up the epoxy and got the screen with hinges set back like they used to be. Then I just put the epoxy in and let it set and it worked great. You need to make sure not to get any epoxy into the hinge joint or your laptop wont close any more.

Also that laptop was a huge pain to take apart so if you dont know what your doing dont try this. There are lots of really thin ribon cables that could easily be damaged.

[jviergar]

Thanks for the tip. I checked the screws on the lapto, and indeed the one closest to the noisy hinge was completly loose.