My friend’s had her laptop a long time, and it was a bit beaten up. Still in usable condition, but some of the keys weren’t working like they should anymore. It’d been an ongoing issue for months. I know a guy who’s good with fixing up PCs and laptops, and he doesn’t charge prices that are through the roof. I live a lot closer to him than she does, so I offered to take her laptop to him to fix the keys.
After I take it to him, he calls me the next day and says he’s fine to go ahead with the repair, but the battery is bloated, and it should be replaced ASAP. I did tell him she wanted it back ASAP as well for work. So, instead of buying a new battery + waiting for a replacement, him and I both made the judgement call that it could survive a little longer with the current battery, and that it could be replaced at home quite easily in the next month or so. The battery was bloated, which is grounds for immediate removal, or it can cause other damages. But it wasn’t bursting, and it’d likely been bloated for a while, so we figured it would be alright.
The next morning he rings me again. He’s fixed the keys, given it a nice clean too. Brilliant. He shows me the keys working through the video call, and tells me to come pick it up in an hour. An hour later, I arrive. He tries to show me again. The laptop won’t turn on. We’re both confused, and we spend the next hour in his office trying to get this laptop to show a single sign of life it was showing earlier. Nothing. It looks like the battery may have shorted the motherboard + killed it off. In the hour between it being completely fine and me picking it up.
Anyway, he says he’s sorry and doesn’t let me pay him for the repair, he’s a super nice guy. Tells me to leave the laptop with him + he says he’ll try a little longer, a few different ways to see if it’ll come back on. Hopefully the motherboard isn’t dead, maybe it’s just being slow. But realistically, it’s looking dead. So then I go have an awkward conversation with my friend about how she gave me a laptop she thought had the equivalent of a broken toe, but actually it needed a heart transplant, but it should’ve still been okay a while longer, but it just had a heart attack and now it’s dead.
She barely responded to me when I spoke and ended up crying. And now I feel like I shouldn’t have offered to help get it fixed at all. I actually somehow feel a bit evil? I know with complete certainty that my guy didn’t do anything wrong. He’s not scammy like that, he was great in repairing my own laptop, and I saw her laptop repaired with my own eyes on the video call. But I can see how from her perspective it could look like the laptop might have been perfectly fine if she’d never given it to me, and the guilt or anxiety of being perceived as a shit friend is actually eating at me 🙁
I just want to know if I’m possibly at fault at all. Feel free to ask any clarifying questions if you think I’ve missed any details that would make this clearer. Thanks.
NAH. This is just a sucky situation. You tried to do a solid for your friend, the tech guy made a reasonable call based on the info he had, and the laptop had a hidden time bomb in it. It’s totally understandable she’s upset, her work tool just died. And it’s understandable you feel guilty. But you didn’t break it, its pre-existing condition did. You’re a good friend for trying to help.
YTA you should have clued her in on the battery issue so she could make the call to replace is now or try to wait it out. You made the decision to chance it. The repair guy was just doing his job, so it’s not his fault. You don’t know if your friend could have waiting longer to get it back under the condition that the battery could make the entire thing worse.
yes this! OP should have at most, been the courier for this. If she agreed to let you take it in, the repairman should have contacted HER about the battery and what it meant, to let her decide to risk it or not.
soft YTA because I feel like you were probably just trying to help her out, but you took away her agency when you decided about the battery for her and in doing so, made her property your responsibility. You could have just offered to drop off/ pick up for her, or even just put the two of them in touch and never taken possession, but… you did.
Unfortunately, this isn’t even something that may be absolved by you buying her a new laptop… not that I saw anywhere where you offered… because losing the files on there may be what she’s actually mourning more. Imagine if there’s years of writing, important school work, sensitive files, unreplaceable photos, hours of art, work she’ll have to redo off the clock so she doesn’t get fired… this can be a really stressful, really emotional loss even if to an outsider its ‘just a laptop’. Handle with compassion.
Is it something renter’s insurance might cover? no experience with that myself, but have heard mixed results for other people. Or if she’s using it for work then it should be replaced by her employer, if she has one.
Firstly, I will say that the memory is fully intact, and can easily be transferred to another laptop. The repair guy has offered to switch it over to another laptop and discount the price of any of the laptops in his office. Not because he’s at fault, but just because he feels bad that that happened really. He’s always got lots of spares that he takes apart for parts.
I do understand what you’re saying, and I definitely might be at fault in this scenario. I think I’m just frustrated and upset at the situation, cause if the battery did actually kill the motherboard, it was a freak accident that shouldn’t have happened yet. It really should have lived quite a bit longer, the risk was incredibly minimal.
I don’t know. I should’ve told her when he mentioned it, but I really didn’t think she’d say any different, and it just wasn’t supposed to do that. Like yes, it’s an active volcano that could theoretically erupt at any moment, but it had been perfectly fine for months in her laptop while she’d been using it 14+ hours a day. The odds were not in our favour I guess.
NAH, you weren’t aware of the battery issue and you didn’t really do anything to break it. Yes it’s unfortunate that you didn’t immediately decide to remove the battery, but she wasn’t even aware of the issue and it likely would’ve died in her hands sooner rather than later as well – which would’ve been extra dangerous for her also if she didn’t even know the battery was a fire hazard. It’s pretty reasonable of her to be upset but give her a minute, she’s probably just upset that her laptop broke, not necessarily upset at you.
Unfortunately you are 100% at fault here, from the perspective of your friend. It sucks, because you had good intentions, and you didn’t break the laptop; but this is all on you.
yta
I think the part where the repair guys tells OP the battery needs to be replaced ASAP and OP fails to update the friend is what’s pushing it into AH territory for me. OP should have let friend make that call.
” it should be replaced ASAP. I did tell him she wanted it back ASAP as well for work. So, instead of buying a new battery + waiting for a replacement, him and I both made the judgement call that it could survive a little longer with the current battery, and that it could be replaced at home quite easily in the next month or so.”
> *I offered to take her laptop to him to fix the keys.*
From the laptop owners perspective, he took a risk on taking it away to fix, and it didn’t pan out in his favour. This is the focus on the post. It’s much like if I borrow your car, and I have an accident in it. Even if it wasn’t my fault, from your perspective it has ruined every part of your life that relies on that car.
If the laptop got fixed, and he brought it back, and then it worked fine, everyone would be happy. But this isn’t how it went down.
The Q is not who broke the laptop. The laptop was broken. The Q is, is the OP the AH for causing this distress. Yes. 100%.
If the question was ‘who broke the laptop’ it is the tech. but that is not the Q here. Look, if the laptop was fixed, and OP was bringing it back, but dropped it, and it smashed, OP would be the AH for taking away the laptop and then rendering it unserviceable. It’s the same thing. Perspective is everything. This post has a perspective.
YTA it wasn’t your laptop so idk why you made the call on the battery instead of asking her. by making that decision you have now made yourself responsible for the laptop and it is your fault
I made that call for multiple reasons.
1. The repair guy said that the risk was very minimal, and I agreed with him.
2. It had survived for months with the battery the way it was, and it hadn’t actually completely ballooned yet.
3. My friend isn’t very knowledgeable on tech. I don’t think she’d have realised there was cause for concern, especially with both of us not seeing it. So I thought she would very likely have asked for it back without the battery replacement, and I just didn’t want to bother her with it since it seemed redundant.
Not disagreeing with you btw, just answering why I made that call :/
Yta
YTA.
Imagine this. You go to an auto repair shop to get your car battery replaced. You tell the mechanic that you would like to get your car back as soon as possible. While replacing your battery, the mechanic finds a broken part in the engine that could completely total the car if it got any even slightly worse. The part would take a week to get there.
In that situation, you would want the mechanic to:
A.) Remove the broken part, inform you of the issue and the ramifications, then wait for your input.
B.) Assume you care more about getting your car back quickly, put the broken part back on the engine, then hope for the best.
NAH you didn’t know the battery was broken initially plus its an extra expense you weren’t sure your friend could afford nor once that needed to be addressed immediately seriously it coukd lasted quite a while like that honestly plus it would’ve likely made the wait time for your friend far longer as you guys probably would’ve had to order a new battery for it.