WARRANTIES More consumers urge Pa. House to pass 'computer lemon law'

The House has heard many similar stories in the past.
By JEFF GELLES
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
When Don DeNenno bought his first personal computer four years ago, he had no clue of the frustration ahead.
He paid $1,200 for an up-to-date Hewlett-Packard desktop. But every time he went online, within a few minutes he was disconnected.
DeNenno, who raises and trains horses at a farm in West Chester, estimates that he called the computer-maker 40 to 50 times over the next 12 months. Each time, a technician led him through some tweak in the software, assuring him that, this time, the problem would be solved.
But it wasn't. As his one-year warranty was about to expire, all DeNenno could do was insist that he was dissatisfied and planned to still hold the company to its warranty.
HP never solved the problem. But a friend of DeNenno's, an engineer who agreed to help, quickly diagnosed the trouble: a glitch in the computer's operating system, Microsoft's Windows ME, when combined with a noisy phone line.
Confronted with that information, Hewlett-Packard offered DeNenno a 75 percent credit toward a new computer.
I wish I could say that was the end of DeNenno's problems. But we're talking about computers, so you'd probably never believe me anyway.
But I can tell you that, in many ways, DeNenno can count himself as lucky.
Fifteen months, three computers and two unsolvable problems later, DeNenno finally has a unit that works just fine. His out-of-pocket costs have been limited to about $600, for the first of the replacements and for an extended warranty. Others have fared far worse.
Lemon law
DeNenno told his story recently to the Consumer Affairs Committee of the Pennsylvania House, which is considering a proposed "Computer Lemon Law," modeled after automobile lemon laws that exist in every state.
It's not clear whether the committee will smile on this proposal more than it did on an earlier version five years ago. But what is clear is that House members have heard many similar stories, from relatives and friends as well as from constituents.
In fact, the bill's primary sponsor, Rep. Raymond Bunt, a Montgomery County, Pa., Republican, told me the legislature has become a stop-of-last-resort for frustrated computer buyers.
Bunt says that three or four times a month, his office gets a call from a computer owner seeking help with a manufacturer or retailer that seems to be dodging its responsibility to make and sell reliable products.
"When we get the complaints, they're really scraping the bottom of the barrel," Bunt says.
I know what he's talking about, firsthand. Two years ago, I wrote about tech-support problems at Dell Computer. I still get calls and e-mails from Dell customers desperate for help when all else has failed.
Is a new law the answer?
Craig Kimmel, an auto lemon-law specialist who has used existing state and federal laws to intervene on behalf of computer owners such as DeNenno, thinks so.
"PC-makers think warranty laws don't apply to them," he told the committee. "Nothing short of filing a lawsuit gets their attention."
Proposal
The law Bunt proposes would address that problem by setting clear standards for warranty rights during the first two years of a computer's life. If a manufacturer tried repeatedly to solve a problem but failed, the owner would get a new computer or a refund.
If Bunt's bill goes anywhere, you can expect a full-court press against it by computer-makers and sellers.
Industry reps told the committee that it would undermine free choice, forcing everybody to pay the cost of longer-term warranties when some people are tech-savvy enough not to need them.
They also warned that the vast majority of problems are caused by software problems, not hardware failures.
Pointing fingers at each other is an old dodge, of course. Hardware-makers get away with it even when they sell the software that crashes their own computers, or when hardware really is to blame.
Consumers are entitled to something other than deniability. Responsibility would be a good place to start.