my mum has a 14 month old lap top which has died. does she have any legal rights? ?

She has the legal right to breath, drink, pursue happiness, play tic tac toe, buy a new laptop or get it fixed and continue paying for your stuff.

I would challenge Tesco stating that your statutory rights are being denied due to an item of the value of the laptop only lasting 14 months. I have done this before and threatened legal action using my statutory rights to a decent product to work for a reasonable amount of time without fault and had the product fixed by them at no cost. Don't think just because it is out of warranty now they can just say we won't do anything, they can't, speak to a manager and be polite but state your case clearly.

Check this consumer sites page for more details and good luck.

Regardless of warranty, goods sold should be of reasonable durability. In UK law, you have up to six years to claim (that does not mean you can claim for an apple that has gone rotten after four though). Most reasonable people would expect a computer to last at least two to three years, though there may be abuse caveats - if it was always on in a dusty environment for example, or if the damage was from spilling a drink into it.

It is also the seller that is liable, not the manufacturer. If it was paid for on a credit card, the credit card company are also liable if Tesco fail to help.

If you are not having any joy at the local branch, try contacting Tesco head office. If that does not get anywhere, pop along to your local CAB.

Not unless she bought an extended warranty.

That's why they tell you how long the warranty is before you buy it. If she had "legal right" to something longer, they would have said that in the first place.

Since she "lost a lot of work", I will assume the busted part was a hard disk. How do you know it's completely "broken"?

And the next, obvious questions is: did she have any backups of her files?

No, none whatsoever, I'm afraid. It's out of warranty, and backups are her repsonsibility.

On the plus side, unless it's the hard-drive that's failed, you can retrieve the data. You can generally get at least some back even off a failed drive.

If it's only 14 months old, it's almost certain to be worth repairing.

whether or no longer you are trying this, purely the reality which you're having this communicate with somebody means that somebody feels that's ok. And no rely what, it incredibly is going to get some heated responses. What did you anticipate from a team of mothers?!? No, that's not ok, to respond to your question.

Well, that's what the warranty is about. After that, it's your problem, sorry. However, if the hard drive isn't the problem, you can get a simple adapter and put it in a desktop to copy the data off.

possibly not.. but if you look around u might b able to get it fixed.. whats the make?

My dads laptop died.. the battery was dead so it was hibernating.. he turned it on.. and didnt charge it.. and the battery soon ran out.. and it died.. it was his own fault like so he didnt have any rights.. so just bought a new one.. but got all the stuff off it unto a disk from a computer shop.. so all his work was saved..!

I'll give your mum a tenner for the laptop and then sell her a new one that, ahem, fell off the back of a lorry....X

i dont think because it is no longer under warranty, i had similiar problem before when warranty was out by 2 days only, i couldnt do anything because it wasnt under warranty anymore simple