Erik says Toshiba owners looking to get their warranty repairs done quickly by authorized providers are largely out of luck because the company refuses to let authorized providers fix most Toshibas, demanding instead that they be sent back to the company.

He writes:

I work for a PC repair shop that is a warranty center for all the major laptop companies; IBM/Lenovo, Toshiba, Business line Dell, Samsung, Sony, you get the picture. This email is kind of delayed but I think it is time to say it. As of October 15th the majority of Toshiba laptops CANNOT be taken to “Authorized Service Providers” even though customer support may say so.

If you go to warranty.toshiba.com and type in your serial number, it will tell you whether or not it is Depot only or Depot AND the Authorized Service Provider. However, one that that should be noted, upon checking 10 laptops we just did the warranty for, about 8 of them were no long able to be done at an ASP. It seems Toshiba does not want us to do the warranties here anymore.

Every day we get about 5 people coming into our shop wanting warranty done cause customer support told them to come to us. We look up their warranty (it takes 5 seconds), and it says Depot only.

All consumerists out there, please check your warranty online rather than calling up Toshiba. I will 100% guarantee they will ALWAYS tell you to come to us before even checking if it possible to or not.

Toshiba owners, how have you managed to get your warranty repairs settled?

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