From: andrey@cco.caltech.edu (Andre T. Yew)
Subject: Does opening your A3000 void your warranty?
Keywords: voiding warranty
Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 09:31:56 GMT


	I remember this question being asked a few weeks ago somewhere, but
I don't remember if there was a definite answer given.  From reading 
both the warranty card and the Gold Service letter, the answer should
be no.

	However, when I called Gold Service almost three weeks ago to report
a problem, and when I told the service person that I had opened
my Amiga, he immediately told me that my warranty was void.  I then
called Commodore for a clarification and they gave me the Gold Service
number, so I called there again.  Speaking with a different service rep,
I was told that opening my Amiga would not void my warranty, so confident
that I still had my warranty intact, I reported my problem again.
After a few days, I called up to followup on my previous call.  The
rep then told me that my warranty was void according to their computer
and that the service rep would not even talk to me.  They suggested
calling my dealer, which I have yet to do.

	So can someone tell me if I'm in the right here?  My interpretation
of the warranty conditions, which may be completely bogus, is that
if I damaged the system myself, then the repair would not be covered
under warranty.  If someone unauthorized person (like myself) attempted
any sort of modification and damaged the system, that would not be
under warranty.  In no place does it ever say what under what
conditions would my warranty be voided.  I assume that there's some
God clause somewhere that allows them to do so.  Before I go and
raise a big stink with Commodore, could someone save me the embarassment
if I'm wrong?

	(If anyone's interested, my problem is that my 3000 cannot low-level
format any SCSI device, external or internal.  When I PrepHD, for example,
and reboot, the disk partitions never show up.  And when I run PrepHD again,
it says there's no RDB written.  Now, when I take my hard disk to another
3000 and PrepHD it, it's fine.  When I take that drive and reinstall it 
in my system, it seems fine until I try to write to it.  The file is filled
with garbage, usually ` marks show up everywhere.  After the first write,
checksum errors seem to build up exponentially until the disk is useless.
I'm concluding from this that it's probably not my harddrive and it's
my SCSI controller that was broken.  It was when I started to explain
this to the tech rep that he decided to void my warranty, and he didn't
even get to hear me explain how I exchanged drives with someone else --
he'd probably try to void that other person's warranty, too.   Please
excuse my sarcasm -- it's difficult to resist at this point.)

	I don't know if people will want to read about my problems, so I'd
prefer it if people send me email, and I'll summarize in an article
labeled "SUMMARY: voiding warranty by opening case" or something like
that.  People who know me by my notoriety in posting utterly irrelevent
articles in csa.advocacy and .graphics know that I read the net regularly,
so I'll be sure to write a summary.  Besides whenever I post an irrelevent
article again in the future, and I haven't yet posted the summary, you
all will have extra flame material with which to bombard me :).  Also, I'm
mad enough at this point at Commodore administration that I'd like the
whole world to know if they're being pinheads about this.  In other
words, trust me -- I will post a summary.  Oh, it will appear in
csa.misc (this newsgroup, hopefully).

	Thanks in advance for any information or advice you may give me.

--Andre

-- 
Andre Yew                             andrey@tybalt.caltech.edu (131.215.48.100)