Parts-People — Local services in Austin

The journey that I had with this company was a rather long one. I had a dell G15 5515 that I had passed down to one of my children and it had started to experience some issues with not wanting to charge the battery. Initially it was sent over to Northridge Fix and they had believed that it was a bad battery and power supply. When I got it back the screen had some damage to it and the issue was still there. They deemed it a no fix and did not want to handle the damage they caused. I decided that I was going to send the laptop in to these folks and see how bad everything was. I offered my child a new unit but she wanted this one because it was mine at one point and I did my graduate work on it. I ordered the box and I sent it in. After a lot of testing it was found out that the board was toast. Here’s what all was done to it to get it in shape

The screen was replaced The board was replaced 2 larger ssds were installed and cloned The thermal pads were replaced PTM7950 was applied

yea, it was a lot.

Later on the os needed to be reinstalled and the screen replaced again. The process was very straight forward. I was working with Harris on things. I could tell that he was irritated by me verifying things but it was a very oddly specific order and I wanted it done up to the standard that I deliver to other people. The initial batch of work was completed and on return the screen had some really weird blooming issues and the hinge was tight. The screen was randomly turning black as well but nothing could be found wrong with the unit. I sent it back and on return the hinge was loose but the blooming was still there. I placed a call and Ben picked up. As far as I can tell he’s a very pleasant guy to work with. I was deferred out to Nathan and I explained things in detail. It was going back again it seemed. Nathan did additional work on it and he did a very good job preserving my child's data during the OS reinstall. We went over the screen issue and he was kind enough to replace the screen assembly and get it close to perfect. I can see why he’s the owner. He’s easy to speak to as well even when I don’t speak well in return due to aphasia. On return everything was pretty close to perfect. It went through a very long setup process but we are good to go. She’s using it for work and play. It's exactly what we needed and for that I'm grateful. Thanks folks.

Would I use their services again? Yea I would. Despite the issues that I encountered, I would use them again. It turns out that this model of laptop was prone to screen issues. They went above and beyond and that’s what counts. I would also for others reading this to keep in mind that these people are busy. I’m pretty warm and social at times and yes they can come off as direct but they are working hard. Time is a factor. It's not always someone being rude, alot of the time it's “we have a bunch of orders and only so many hours in the day.” That’s ok. Overall I give them an A. Thank you guys. The repair was little under 900. Given the work they had to do it was more than competitive. It took a few months but we got there. My fiancee will be using them in the future to repair her business laptops for her employees.

thank you, so much

Parts People: Mopping up Northridge...

My wife and I decided to purchase two new laptops in early 2021. My wife's existing laptop was a 2011 vintage Dell Latitude. It served her well for years for casual web browsing but we found ourselves working from home due to covid. The old Latitude was showing it's age even with the SSD upgrade so We purchased a Dell Vostro 5502 for her, 11th gen Core I7, Nvidia MX-330, 8Gb ram, and that beautiful 300 nits, 8-bit RGB, IPS screen. I works great for her and I found myself wanting the same model about a month later to replace my 2012 vintage Latitude. Dell.com showed what appeared to be the same machine with 16Gb ram for the same price we paid a month prior. I just figured this was the latest promotion and didn't look at the specs too closely. My new Vostro arrived and I saw the problem when I first fired it up. The screen was not nearly as bright as my wife's new laptop. Digging into the specs I realized how they were selling the same model with 16Gb ram for the same price...It shipped with a 220 nits, 6-bit RGB panel. I had some serious screen envy. In fact one of my reasons for upgrading from the 2012 Latitude was to get a better, brighter screen. I reached out to Dell support multiple times to see if I could purchase a new screen assembly but every quote they sent me was for the 220 nits screen. They finally came out and stated that they could sell me the better screen assembly because that's not what mine shipped with. I found a couple of web sites that would sell me just the LCD panel not the entire assembly. I've upgraded laptop screens on older models that were held together with screws but these new machines have screens that appeared to be assembled with double sided tape. I wasn't sure how to perform the upgrade with our destroying the screen or bezel so I looked for youtube videos show how it's done. Unfortunately there were no videos showing this procedure. I lived with the inferior screen for about one year then I recently found a video showing how to perform this screen swap so I purchased some double sided tape 1/5" and 1/8" for the bezel and the removable strips to secure the panel to the case. Parts-People was now listing the 300 nits screen in Dell OEM packaging so I went for it. It was easy to install. I used thin automotive style feeler gauges to gently separate the bezel from the tape and it came right off. The factory tape was easy to remove from the bezel. The LCD panel was easy to separate form the case by pulling the tabs, similar to a 3M command strip. Reassembly was easy as well with the new tape. Thanks to Parts-People I no longer have screen envy. The new screen is much brighter and the colors are much more vivid. Red looks like red and not orange. White looks like white and not grey. Thank you...

In summary, I purchased a replacement battery for my laptop, and its capacity significantly decreased over the course of a couple of months of normal use. There was an exchange of several emails, during which several excuses were provided in an attempt to convince me the battery's performance was normal. Ultimately, they sent me a warranty replacement, but it took multiple requests to get there.

UPDATE: Shortly after leaving my initial review, the company reached out to me, apologizing that my email had been inadvertently captured by their spam filter. A customer service rep, Michael T., provided information over the course of several emails in perceived attempts to skirt responsibility for the advertised warranty. He cited third party websites that stated the discrepancy between design capacity and my battery's actual capacity was normal. He further informed me that because the computer's POST did not report any errors, the battery was not considered to be failing. He provided additional reasoning that the battery was purchased from them in "Used: Very Good" condition, and that used batteries they sell are only required to have 80% health. However, their website defines "Used: Very Good" condition as "Item pulled from working system; may have been used for a short period of time, tested and verified to be in perfect working condition.” Their use of the word perfect to me implies the battery should perform no differently from a brand-new battery. Ultimately, they agreed to provide a replacement, but it took four back-and-forth emails of them attempting to convince me otherwise before giving in.

ORIGINAL: I purchased a replacement battery for my Dell laptop. Its advertised capacity is 63Wh, and it performed well for a few days, but then the capacity degraded significantly over the course of a couple weeks. The battery was properly calibrated upon installation. Currently, its actual capacity is about 46Wh. Parts-people advertises a 1-year replacement warranty for this product. Attempts to contact the company to resolve the issue have been ignored. If you purchase parts from this company, don't expect them to stand behind any...