Laptop.com.auReviews 70

I don't normally expect much from online stores, especially when I was buying the cheapest laptop I could find. Unfortunately when it arrived the screen was cracked (the dents in the box seemed to indicate it didn't have the gentlest of trips!). How suprised was I by the customer support I received from Laptop.com.au. All I had to do was email them and they would respond straight away, even over the weekend. They arranged to have it replaced, helped me find a similar product, and sent me the new one even before the broken one had been sent back. I don't normally take the time to do online reviews, but this was the best experience I have had from any company. And the laptop they sent works well and has acheived what I had hoped. Thanks for your help - I will be back!

[UPDATED - please read all the way to the end, where you see all issues have been resolved. I'm still giving three stars, because my refurbished laptop is most likely a refurbished reconstructed sleekbook with ultrabook features... but that works for me!]

I'm still waiting to hear a response, but my ultrabook was delivered... but had no SSD! Surprised, I checked the HP device manager (preinstalled) and it seems I was sold a SleekBook, the cheaper alternative in the same case. Looking closer I found THE ULTRABOOK LABEL HAD BEEN PEELED OFF SOMETHING AND STUCK ON MY MACHINE!

[edit] The number of stars on this review is slowly rising, as staff at the company seem to be genuinely trying to make sense of the situation.

[update] I got the machine and the SSD working! Looks like someone swapped in all the hardware that would make the machine pass as an Ultrabook, slapped an Ultrabook sticker on it, and sold it to laptop.com.au as an Ultrabook. Okay I'm being generous, this still might all be some sort of a ruse to offload Sleekbooks.

It turned out, the SSD wasn't configured as an integrated motherboard cache like it is in an Ultrabook, and someone had tried to format it as an MSDOS partition which only allowed 8GB of the SSD to be accessible :( I booted to Linux, reformatted all 32GB of the SSD and installed Linux Mint (entire install including downloads taking 12 minutes!) on the SSD as root directory, resized the primary partition by half and added a new 250GB /home partition. I would not recommend trying these steps as a novice!

Anyway, short story I'm happy. Long story, I'm happy but with a "refurbished" machine you get what you pay for, and might need some technical assistance getting it working to your satisfaction. This problem would have required a re-install of Windows at the very least if I had wanted SSD performance from Windows. Their online problem solving service worked with me for many back-and-forth emails on Friday afternoon, and he/she seemed genuinely to be attempting to solve the problem.

For attempted helpful support, cheap price, and a machine I'm finally quite satisfied with, I give laptop.com.au three stars. Make of that what you will.

Ridiculous customer service. Warranty is not real warranty. Anything that happens to your laptop windows is a software issue and everything else is excluded from warranty like battery and damage in transit.

Warranty terms and conditions are not even presented to the buyer anywhere,
Buy from them if you would like to take a chance on your hard earned money, but dont expect any warranty support except for a couple of emails and never expect any problem will fall under warranty, Plus they will not talk to you on phone.
Shonky!