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Customer: Dell Denies Speaker Repair Under Warranty, Blames VLC
An anonymous reader writes "VLC is incapable of increasing the actual power past 100%, all that is being done is the waveform is being modified to be louder within the allowed constraints. But, that didn't stop Dell from denying warranty service for speaker damage if the popular VLC Media Player is installed on a Dell laptop. Also we got a report that service was denied because KMPlayer was installed on a laptop. The warranty remains valid on the other parts of the laptop. VLC player developer [Jean-Baptiste Kempf] denied the issue with VLC and further claimed that the player cannot be used to damage speakers. How can I convince Dell to replace my laptop speaker which is still in warranty? Or class action is only my option?"
Find some way to ruin the whole unit in a way that doesn't void the warranty. Start a process that uses lots of power so your chips are working hard, and wrap it up in a hot blanket. Or something along those lines.
IANAL, but your first path for court action is small claims, not a class action.
Any decent hardware engineer would not put out electronics for mass production that can be destroyed by software. Hopefully an EE from Levono or HP will reverse engineer the circuit and determine if the is bad engineering and put all of the information on the web. This may be the only way to get Dell to put out quality (or at least not defective) products into the marketplace.
So to keep,a long story short, I had to sue Dell over a overheating Alienware M11x GAMING notebook.
I had a friendly but non helpful support case with Dell and a short also friendly but also non helpful discussion afterwards. Then I sued.
I won.
Option The First:
1. Buy Dell Laptop
2. Do first-use OS initialization, power down, remove HDD, store away in a safe place
3. Add new harddrive, install OS of choice
4. If at any time you have warranty service needs, swap original HDD back in
Option The Second:
1. Don't buy Dell
.
HSJ$$*&#^!#+++ATH0
NO CARRIER
1) for class action you would need other people who had the same problem.
2) Go see a lawyer and bring the warranty service contract. You can take them to small claims court and possibly get a judgement simply because they aren't likely to show. Just keep track of your lawyer's billing rates, and the filing fees for small claims because you're going to need that info when comparing your time, effort and money against option #4 I list below.
3) Build a time machine and then go back in time and tell yourself to return the laptop for warranty service, and when they ask what's wrong, say "the speaker quit working, I have no idea why"
4) Or the real thing you can do hit a pillow and get the anger out. Then grumble about Dell to your friends and let them pat you on the shoulder. Then buy a pair of external speakers that aren't shitty, and don't stop worrying about small potatoes. Really man, it sucks to get screwed on a fine line of a warranty issue.. we've all been there. Let it go.
I don't know what VLC player is, but any laptop that allows its speakers to be damage by software has a design flaw. Why is it that companies will try their damnedest to screw their customers over until publicly shamed with a bad-pr article like this?
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
That's the beauty of a digital signal: You simply can't put in a stronger signal than the bits allow. Yes, a "clipped" signal has high energy harmonics, but the same harmonics could be encoded right in the audio source signal without additional player amplification. For example, using mp3gain to set a high gain on any MP3 file will cause the decoder to happily produce a clipped time domain signal. Even Windows Media Player will play it clipped. Designing an audio system such that it can't handle any signal you could put in a WAV file is just idiotic. Such penny-pinching certainly isn't the user's fault and would not void legally mandated warranties. Dell can of course exclude anything they like from a voluntary warranty, if they make it clear upfront what is excluded.
..it uses Windows system calls which then call the sound driver
If the damage was caused by software, it's clearly the fault of the driver
VLC is too far up the stack to cause anything abnormal
Warrantors cannot require that only branded parts be used with the product in order to retain the warranty.[7] This is commonly referred to as the "tie-in sales" provisions,[8] and is frequently mentioned in the context of third-party computer parts, such as memory and hard drives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...
You can damage speakers by putting too much sound through them. I do not know why there are not more safeguards, but this happens (at least for normal stereo system speakers).
So any program that allows you to increase the original file volume would only help you do this. Based on what I have seen with the quality of dell laptops, it probably is possible to break the speakers by pumping too much noise out of them, and using VLC to up the file volume could help you do this.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Do you realize that the "fuck beta" comments are already much more annoying than the actual beta?
Fuck "fuck beta" comments.
Playing the devil's advocate here, but most audio waveforms look like sine-waves (so to speak). Converting the waveform to a square-wave (what VLC's clipping does when you push the volume above 100%) puts a prolonged stress on the speakers even if you don't increase max output, which most speakers can't withstand. And the VLC dudes have helpfully mapped the volume controls to the scroll wheel, so you 'll probably push the volune above 100% accidentally. Thhe ability to push volume above 100% should be disabled by default IMO. Anyway, if your Dell fries speakers but can stilk boot, uninstall VLC and KM Player.
You don't speak for this old timer. Stop bloody ruining every thread with your immature anti-beta posts.
Beta is not ruining my time on Slashdot, YOU ARE!
Send your feedback via the email they they have provided and leave it at that. If they do not listen to your feedback, then feel free to vote with your feet, but stop ruining the site for everybody else.
ps. Why hide behind anonymity?
Ask Dell what the cost of the repairs are then fill in small claims court for that amount.
Some other things you might do are:
1. Complain to BBB
2. Talk to your credit card company you have have additional warranty service under them.
3. Email CEO. michael@dell.com & link to Slashdot story
4. Nuke option. Have Slashdot email CEO michael@dell.com
(Would we crash their email server?)
You would think that cinema speakers (those big honkin' speakers that sit behind the screen at the movie theatre - mine are about about six feet tall but there are many larger than that) would be impervious to damage but some movies occasionally overdrive the speakers to a point that the drivers are damaged. The most recent one that I'm aware of is Paranormal Activity 2: The Marked Ones, where there was 7 seconds of high pitched buzzing on reel 4 that could destroy the speakers.
Here is an email from Paramount that describes the problem:
QUOTE:
Dear Projectionist,
Paramount has had reports of speaker damage from some theatres playing PARANORMAL ACTIVITY: THE MARKED ONES. In several cases we have been able to research, the volume had been turned up to high levels at patronsâ(TM) requests.
We are currently working to get information on speaker/amplifier brand and model to see if any particular combination of hardware might be more susceptible to damage. At this time, most of the damaged speakers have been identified as JBL model 4632â(TM)s, but this is preliminary data.
We are also working on an audio patch which may lessen the potential for damage.
For the time being, please do not set your volume at a high level on this film.
Thank you for your cooperation.
END OF QUOTE
Technicolor sent out a new soundtrack for that movie without the 7 seconds of buzzing and as far as I know that solved the problem.
The point here is that even high-end cinema audio systems can be damaged by a poorly engineered soundtrack, so I'm not surprised to find that the speakers in a cheap laptop could be damaged the same way.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
I always include a $20.00 and a note when I send a laptop in for repair. In the note I explain exactly what I'd like done. Always works with Lenovo.
fnord.
Please tell me if you know how to circumvent this problem.
A circuit to detect the clipped audio pattern or dangerous vibration pattern and shut off power to the speaker, or power limit it.
I had a user whose laptop was replaced by Dell under warranty, except that they sent him back a 17" monstrosity rather than the 13" machine he had at the time. They wouldn't budget on giving him something smaller. After filing a small claims court case, they reimbursed him for the price of his original laptop and I think told him to keep the new one, too. He was happy after that.
Another friend had a HTC One phone whose screen popped and shattered while he was browsing twitter. HTC refused the replacement despite being a month old, claiming he dropped it. After filing a Better Business Bureau complaint, they replaced it under warranty.
Either way, something like that will get someone's eye and hopefully the original poster will be happy. The bigger problem is that this is a thing Dell will break a warranty over, which is ridiculous.
I call this bullcrap. All music nowadays is already compressed to death.
Not everyone listens to the shit music produced in the last few years.
I know very little about audio, but a cursory search turned this up from Wikipedia:
"Because the clipped waveform has more area underneath it than the smaller unclipped waveform, the amplifier produces more power than its rated (sine wave) output when it is clipping. This extra power can damage any part of the loudspeaker, including the woofer, or the tweeter, by causing over-excursion, or by overheating the voice coil. It may cause damage to the amplifier's power supply or simply blow a fuse."
The digital signal obviously has to be converted to analog at some point, so I believe this is what Dell is talking about.
Support microSD: in a post 9/11 world, it is unwise to carry your data on media that you cannot comfortably swallow.
Whoever posts stories, comments, moderates or meta-moderates the coming week using the classic Slashdot interface is a hypocrite.
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
If the comment sections of the articles look alive and well by next Monday, this will mean that the community chose Beta.
No, all it'll mean is that people continued to post. It won't tell you why. Personally I'm planning to post twice as much next week just to spite this self-appointed over-inflated self-righteous crusaders-for-galactic-justice brigade.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Unless you have the actual CD's or records from atleast three decades ago, chances are you are listening to compressed music.
Current distribution (either physical or digital) of old music is compessed as well.
As far as I know, only classical music and a tiny fraction of jazz recordings are still distributed with minimal or no compression.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
The reason I'm going to leave /. is the fuck beta comments, not the beta itself.
This is almost as bad as the reddit /r/atheism crap from a while ago.
Seriously.
The people who advocate small claims are half right. In many states, you have to send a demand letter before you can do that anyway.
Some idiots will say to email the CEO, but if you're lucky, that will just get down to the lawyer, and the lawyer will already be miffed because you've piled more work on him from above. Better to go straight to the lawyer.
I have had several successes, some quite large, and no failures, with the following strategy:
1) Try sincerely to resolve it through normal channels, as you apparently have.
2) Document how that didn't work. If you don't have good documentation, do (1) again.
3) Find the attorney or registered agent's email address. I have never had a problem doing this, but I'm pretty good at the google-fu. Good starting points for names are corporate bios, 10K filings at the SEC, and the Secretary of State's office (which might require a phone call). Since Dell is in Texas, they are required to have a registered agent with the Texas Secretary of state. I live in Texas, and I got Fry's registered agent's name from the Texas Secretary of State when I had an issue with them.
4) Send the attorney an email POLITELY explaining exactly what happened, and what needs to happen to make you a happy camper. Give them two deadlines. The first one should be about two weeks out to let the legal department research the problem on their end. The second one, at the end of the email, goes something like this:
"Please acknowledge receipt of this email within three days to save me the time and expense of sending a registered letter."
A registered letter is exactly what you need to do, in most cases, to put them on notice before you file in small claims. So this sentence puts them on notice that you are preparing to legally put them on notice, and since your speaker repair is way cheaper than dealing with you in court (you're not claiming the bad speaker damaged your hearing, or lost you business when the presentation went awry, are you?), they should be more than happy to do that.
One purpose of the letter that cannot be stressed enough is that you are not arguing with the lawyer. You are essentially presenting the same case that you would present in court. Your letter should be polite, without speling or grandmar erors, and compelling. Do not attempt lawyerese, because that is not required or even encouraged in small claims court. Just write it in plain English. You are not arguing with the lawyer, but you are showing him that you will present yourself well in court, and after expending time and money to defend, he will stand a good chance of losing.
You can destroy two Dell laptops, buy a third and still spend less than a single Apple laptop.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Yep FUCK BETA!!!
Didn't know how to give my opinion...
Oh by the way, just we are not against it because it's new, and we don't like change. We just don't like ugly change. Same with windows 8, people don't hate it, because it's different. People hate it because it's terrible to use, and looks ugly too...
I want something new, that's easier to use, faster, or more features, or looks better... Not change for change....
That might be so, but as someone who has been here almost since the beginning -- Slashdot community has always had a vocal negative reaction to change. I remember people here debating how stupid a thing mobile phones were, if they needed to call anyone they could use their landline, no need to change that. And when XP came we really hated it, the new UI and more, but 10 years later it is what many like to stick with. There are tons of examples like this. I think it might partly be that geeks invest more than others in how things are, so resist change.
One option is what you did here on /. . . . but in a planned campaign that includes getting the VLC org on your side.
Another is civil (small claims) court. No lawyer necessary and guaranteed to cost Dell more than you if they fight it. You are very likely to get a judgement on your side if Dell doesn't send a representative. You can have oodles of fun serving the judgement on Dell. I have gone to civil court twice and both times the judge was very good.
In Alberta: http://www.albertacourts.ab.ca...
A bit of a windmill tilt since after all is said and done you could easily replace the speakers yourself for much less.
Your local state/provincial/federal government is bound to have a consumer affairs section which has an interest in making sure businesses treat consumers fairly. You could look into that.
Finally, go around the service desk if you can. See if you can make contact with someone other than a scripted service droid.
I had an HP inkjet that would not pick up paper no matter what I did. I had several trouble calls in with them while it was under warranty but nothing helped so I tossed the offender into the closet and got on with my life. About a year later (outside of the warranty) I happened to read online about a service kit from HP that would cure the problem. Free under warranty. Called HP up and you know they said too bad, so sad, your warranty has expired. They would sell the kit for $40 bucks plus shipping. Half the cost of the printer. I protested about my trouble calls and they said the tickets were no longer in the system.
On the off chance, I sent an email explaining my situation to the HP CEO as firstname.lastname@hp.com. Expecting nothing, I was floored when the next day I received a response from HP apologizing for the situation and that a kit plus a set of ink cartridges were being shipped to me.
I am sure that the email did not go to the CEO of the time (uh, about 8 yrs ago so ...) but someone read the mail and dealt with it.
Nice, but I wasted at least 40 hours on the issue. Wayyyyyyyyyyy more value than the printer. I shudda just thrown the darn thing out at the first sign of trouble.
How upset are you? How much are you prepared to put into it.
Have fun.
Sorry, but the BBB will not help you. It's a front controlled by the businesses that they pretend to police.
(Would we crash their email server?)
Not after the beta
We need a "+1 -- nice sig" moderation.
That may very well be the case (it is), but it doesn't change the fact that Dell had a responsibility to ensure that its speakers aren't capable of producing a sound that would cause them to damage themselves. Dell should have simply dialed back the amplifier, such that ANY signal produced by the computer would be below the rated maximum. Given that Dell has full control over the amount of power being used to drive the speakers, they have no excuse for throwing too much at them.
Do you realize that the "fuck beta" comments are already much more annoying than the actual beta?
Fuck "fuck beta" comments.
How should people voice their displeasure with the potential death of Slashdot?
Brave Sir Robin ran away. ("No!") Bravely ran away away. ("I didn't!")
Sounding like crap has never stopped record companies before. It's the loudness war.
Thus, there's little VLC can do as the signal is already compressed up the wazoo.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Then they set a filter to get rid of most of you?
Seriously, posting anti-beta threads on EVERY post is just annoying everyone else. I would guess that they have read your immature posts already?
I've been a user since 1996-1997. Fuck Beta. The most obvious thing is they don't seem to give a shit about our feelings. I'm sorry you are getting annoyed, but it won't be long before we won't have to worry about anything in the comments, because there won't be any comments any more. It's like sitting with a dying relative. You see death coming, but there really isn't anything that is going to stop it. Sucks, but Fuck Beta.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
Maybe I'm missing something but isn't the entire point of the fuckbeta campaign to ruin the experience of coming here, to demonstrate to the idiots in charge of Slashdot that their website is worthless without our cooperative participation and contributions? By doing your best to quell our political dissent it could be said that it is you who are collaborating with Dice to flush our mutually favorite website down the toilet of corporate mediocrity.
The one last desperate chance we have to save this site (such as it is) is to destroy it, at least temporarily. I apologize for inconveniencing you during our brief struggle with corporate greed/stupidity.
And no, I will not hide behind anonymity.
Hopefully it's going to get real quiet in here in about twelve hours and you and your fellow collaborators can feel free to get together and blow smoke up each other's butts and pretend nothing is wrong in the resulting echo chamber.
Fuck beta, and boycott Slashdot Feb. 10th to 17th.
That's a little bit short-sighted.
Without knowing the nature of the failure, it's impossible to say what the problem actually is. Were the loudspeakers destroyed through mechanical stress or thermal stress?
Limiting the power output of an amplifier for the purpose of preventing loudspeaker damage is not a trivial thing to do.
In terms of damage, loudspeakers don't care (within reason and obvious mechanical limits) about instantaneous power. They care about long-term heating.
If you just clip the signal, you generate an approximation of a squarewave (which loudspeakers hate): This reduces peak power (which isn't normally a problem), and increases average power (which is always a problem), and reduces cooling, AND it sounds terrible (though some listeners seem to not care). Clipping, therefore, at any stage -- including within software (ala VLC), or even during the recording process -- is a problem.
If you add a simple limiter, you've got the same problems all over again, although with less harmonic distortion: Peak power goes down, but average power stays high. Voice coils cook.
If you add a complicated multiband limiter that understands heating, you might have a shot at solving it, but you're into real money in engineering dollars and DSP parts....over some $.50 laptop speakers.
That all said, companies have been selling and folks have been buying integrated audio systems for well over half a decade. If this is 1949 and I crank up my RCA tube set so I can listen to music in the garden and cook the loudspeaker, that's my fault -- not RCA's fault. The best I can hope is that RCA is willing to sell me a replacement speaker at a reasonable price.
Same with a 1980s Fisher "rack system," or a wall full of modern Krell and Martin Logan gear. Or any random boombox. And, I dare say, a laptop.
It is traditionally the job of the listener to ensure that an audio system is performing within its limitations, and not the job of the audio system to protect itself from the listener.
If I crank VLC up to 120 or 200% or whatever the maximum is, and it starts clipping samples and generating square waves, and I turn the other volume controls up so I can hear that distorted drone over the drone of my hot tub, and something breaks...gosh, I guess I'm going to say that it was my own fault for not hearing the plain and obvious distortion that was occurring, and you know, just turn things down. Just as with any other audio system, big or small.
Back to legal stuff: The Magnusson-Moss Warranty Act does not protect consumers from their own stupidity. If I drop my Jeep down a 4-foot embankment and break a front control arm, that's my own dumb fault -- it's certainly not the manufacturer's fault for failing to ensure that I would be unable to perform such maneuvers in MY Jeep (yes, emphasis: If I owned a Jeep, it would be MINE).
HOWEVER, what MMWA does do is ensure that if the manufacturer suspects that a failure is due to end-user modification, that the the onus is on the manufacturer to prove that this is the case. I can be rock-crawling in my Jeep with its trick aftermarket suspension, and if the engine dies from a broken pushrod, it's the manufacturer's responsibility to prove that it's either not a warranted fault OR that my modifications caused the pushrod to break.
Likewise, the onus is on Dell to prove that some software (such as VLC) caused the failure...or that the speakers aren't warranted to begin with due to signs of abuse. Dismissing a warranty claim out-of-hand because of the software installed on a computer, or the shocks on a Jeep (even IF it might be the case that the software did in fact cause the problem, as VLC might be capable of doing) is illegal in all 50 states.
Kid-proof tablet..
but what if you want a usable keyboard and mouse?
Apple keyboards are some of the best around.
You can use any USB mouse with a Mac, but the laptop trackpads actually work extremely well unlike any mouse replacement I have ever used on a PC laptop. They work so well, that along with my external keyboard I use an external trackpad with the mac. Gestures are way better than a scroll-wheel.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's entirely possible the script has been updated to try and fuck you over if you ever use non-standard software on the PC
What exactly is "non-standard software"? It's a general purpose computer so there is no such thing as non-standard applications unless we are talking complete operating system change.