To refuse to pay to repair ds's laptop?

[theduchessstill]

About 6 months ago ex’s df bought ds2 a laptop. Ds has since complained that it is too ‘laggy’ to use for Roblox, which is all he wants to use it for really, and has told me that ex has said I need to pay to have it ‘cleaned’/fixed, which they (ds2 and ex) have apparently found out will cost about £80. Ds2 has told me ex has said that I need to pay for it as he (ex) can’t afford to.

I really don’t want to pay this because:

1. I didn’t buy it. I’ve looked on the reviews for it and I think it was a cheap option and that it wasn’t the best choice for ds’s requirements. Why should I end up paying for someone else’s poor choice and will the work done actually have the desired effect?

2. Ds uses my laptop when he’s with me – although he brings this laptop to mine he uses mine as usual because it’s better. I limit his time on it, as I would do even if he was using his own because that’s what parents do. He also has an xbox at mine (also time limited) so he doesn’t actually need this laptop when he’s at mine at all.

3. I believe ex’s df bought the laptop because ex works from home on his laptop and allows the dc pretty much unlimited screen time. Ds2 doesn’t have a phone yet, or any other device, so I think this laptop was bought as a way of making ex’s life easier as ds2 would be able to go on it all the time at his house, allowing ex to work and generally have a quiet life. So I would therefore be paying for ex to have an easier life. It caused tension when it was bought between ds2 and his db – nothing similar was bought for ds1 and it wasn’t ds2’s birthday but it was just bought to get ds2 off ex’s laptop imo - and of course it was me who had to smooth that over…

4. Ex pays no maintenance (CMS have taken him to court but that got me the grand total of £16 and he continues not to pay) and he buys the dc nothing. That does have a bearing in my reluctance to pay. He doesn’t work in full-time employment but is going away on holiday in a couple of weeks, smokes, drinks, and prioritises his ‘band’ over paid employment.

A slightly complicating factor is that ds2 recently broke ex’s laptop by spilling a glass of water over it. Ex has told him he can’t afford to replace it and he uses ds2’s laptop to work on whenever ds2 is there for a period of time, but since ds only spends 1 night a week there I’m not sure exactly what this ‘work’ that ex does is. Ds2 shouldn’t have spilt the water but it was an accident and if ex didn’t allow him to sit on screen the whole entire time it may not have happened – and surely I’m not responsible for ds2’s accidents when he’s with ex?

I can afford to pay it but I don’t spend £80 without some serious thought and I really don’t want to spend it on this. It seems ex will be a major beneficiary. I also feel like some research needs to be done to find out if it’s even worth it, and I don’t want to do that either – if I choose to buy the dc something major like that I look into it, but now I feel lumbered with picking up the pieces of someone else’s poor choice (not that I think ex df should have paid more – I wish he hadn’t bloody bought it). Ds2 has said he will spend his pocket money on it. He has about £300 saved that he has easy access to (more substantial savings are not accessible until he’s 18, luckily) but, again, I don’t want him to spend a sizeable chunk of his money on this, for mainly the same reasons that I don’t want to spend my money on it.

Any thoughts would be so much appreciated – this has been rumbling on for a while but seems to be coming to a head so I need to make a decision but I really don’t know whether or not I’m being UR to refuse to pay it and email ex telling him so and not to mention my paying it to ds again. DS is 10 if that’s relevant.

At the end of the day. If your son wants to spend his savings on it. Then I would let him. He’s taking accountability for it. I understand why you’d be annoyed. But I do feel it’s his choice. Especially since he broke the other one

However. If he didn’t want to spend his savings. I would fork out for it. You didn’t buy it. So legally it’s not your responsibility. That’s like giving someone a present and two years down the line they ring you up because they broke it....

WOULDNT fork out for it. Not would

No way. Ex bought it, ex deals with it

Tell ex,I would pay, but I am using the money to raise our ds as you dont pay anything

How old is DS? Can he clean it himself? Or can you do it? Or even hire a local teenager and give them a tenner to do it? You literally use the restore function to return it to factory settings, then download some free programs like CCleaner and MalwareBytes and run them. I certainly wouldn’t pay £80 for someone to do something so basic!

Dont let your ds pay either

surely I’m not responsible for ds2’s accidents when he’s with ex

You really need to ask whether you are financially responsible for an accident your son had, while supervised by his Dad, to his Dad? No.

Ds has since complained that it is too ‘laggy’ to use for Roblox, which is all he wants to use it for really, and has told me that ex has said I need to pay to have it ‘cleaned’/fixed, which they (ds2 and ex) have apparently found out will cost about £80

I can't think of any service which costs £80 and will magically make a laptop faster.

• Remove any programs it doesn't need, especially ones which start up with the computer.
• Make sure all the other programs are up to date.
• Run a program called C cleaner (it's free, dead easy) to tidy up the registry.
• If the hard drive is very full, delete some videos.

That won't do much unless he's really got lots of junk programs running at startup, or the hard drive is very full (personally I would not bother on a 6 month old computer) but that's all anyone will be doing for the money.

i can't think of any service which costs £80 and will magically make a laptop faster

This

Thanks for the replies. It's good to know that the £80 probably wouldn't be well spent, which is what I suspected anyway. Judging by the reviews it's probably not ever going to be how ds wants it to be anyway, but I suppose that's not my problem...

Is it a new laptop? It shouldn't need cleaning and fixing it just sounds like its unsuitable for roblox

Ugh tell him you will only entertain conversations about how you should spend your money when he starts paying maintenance and until then he can jog on. He only gets to sit at the grown ups table when he starts acting like one.

These games do not like lap tops my computer doctor told me. The X box is more suitable. Perhaps look for a second hand one of those.

You may want to set up parent controls on this as well.

thecybersafetylady.com.au/2017/06/is-roblox-safe-for-kids/

I don't know this game specifically, but I do know cheap laptops have low-end specs, so can rarely run "current" games. Sounds like the laptop never did the job it was supposed to, and "cleaning" it will only improve things if it was once faster and over time goes slower. The processor or the graphics card will be what's limiting the performance for running this game, and they won't magically get better from wiping the hard drive (which is all the "clean" will do, including losing saved games etc if they're not backed up or stored on the cloud).

Explain to DS it won't make the laptop significantly better, so you're not willing to spend 80 quid on it, and that he'd be better off saving up for a better laptop himself.

Games will run fine on laptops, if the laptop has a high enough spec.

This one clearly hasn't and is probably a cheap laptop meant for not much more than internet browsing and a bit of word processing. £80 won't fix it.

Yanbu. The laptop is nothing to do with you. It doesn't even need to come to your house if it doesn't used there. Like you say the main beneficiary for the upgrade would be your ex. You are in no way responsible for the damage of the spilled water - your ex needs to suck up all these costs.

So your ex wants you to pay £80 to essentially have someone download two trials/free equivalents and run them on the laptop he's using, for his not DS benefit by the sound of things.

Not a bloody chance! £80 for that? I clearly need to go into business!

The processor or the graphics card will be what's limiting the performance for running this game,

Likely has integrated graphics rather than a discrete graphics card, as the latter adds a large amount to the price.

Definitely don't pay for it. Ex's family member bought it, without asking you, so why are you now responsible? Similarly you arent responsible for your son damaging his dads laptop, at all.

A 6 month old laptop should have slowed down considerably - it was never fit for purpose. Maybe you could suggest that ex keeps this laptop for his work and buys DS a new one for Christmas.

I would definitely be tempted to make a point about CM in my response. Like "what a shame, I dont have £80. Maybe if you had paid maintenance for the last X months I would have been able to help you out"

This is purely a specification issue. Lack of decent a CPU and most likely an integrated rather than a dedicated graphics card. The memory may also be an issue. A decent gaming laptop will easily out perform an Xbox due the fixed spec of the latter and the fact that there are far superior parts available for PCs. Spending £80 or £280 will make no difference. Windows comes with a few basic cleaning programmes - Disk Cleaner and defragmentation / optimise which will make a small difference to a laptop that is either a little older or has has heavy usage with files being added / deleted / moved on a regular basis - they do basic housekeeping. There are free programs available that will optimise the disk usage and repair any broken indexing of files but the difference will only be marginal (not noticeable) if the specification is poor. Any laptop costing less than £400 -£500 will very quickly slow down and become a disappointment (and yes I know there are good deals available from time to time but an Intel Celeron is not a good CPU and the better processors cost money).

No way.

Have you told ds the laptop will never be powerful enough? I eould make that clear and tell your entitled Ex to jog on. In fact i would reply to his text with Ds and i will ask our computer savvy friend whether the laptop is high enough spec to run games. While we are talking money, you owe my X in maintenance

If the ex has accidental damage on his contents insurance, then they will stump up for a new laptop. My ds spilled cider on his and fried the otherboard. i thought we might get a couple of hundred back as the laptop was 5 or 6 years old, but ds got a brand new laptop with much the same specs as the original, just faster processors as the old one wasn't made any more.

What is the fix? A professional cleaning of the internals? £80 seems high and that sort of cleaning isn't going to make it better. I'm not sure what you could replace in a laptop for only £80 to make it run that much quick either.

@scaryteacher I may have misread bits of the post but I don't think it's at all damaged, just not up to spec. Unless you're suggesting that the OP purposely spill liquid into the laptop, then I'm not sure that there is any reason for an insurance payout. It's these sort of accidentally-on-purpose ideas that increase all of our insurance premiums. The fact seems to be that the laptop is not all that powerful sadly.

Dont pay.
If you got your son a cheap bike that needed a service would your ex pay for that? No. I don't see it has anything to do with you to be honest.

Ex won't have contents insurance - not a chance!

So I have told ds what knowledgeable posters here have said about his laptop and he burst into floods of tears! Apparently he is worried about being seen as ungrateful if he has to tell ex this, and ex will tell his family and they will all be angry with him (not fil - he's lovely, but it turns out ex mil and sil also contributed a lesser amount and they will be cross). Also, apparently ex does online marking and this is also difficult on ds's laggy computer so ex has been relying on me paying to improve it so he can mark more . Why let ds play on an uninsured laptop all the time when he could have probably got insurance for the cost of a packet of fags monthly?!

I'm so angry about this - they complain about ds being on screen all the time but fail to set limits or provide alternative activities then buy him the cheapest laptop going in the hope he will just shut up and let ex do his minimal 'job'.

I've obviously reassured ds that it's not his fault and that ex's problems aren't his, that I will tell ex by email so he won't have to discuss it (I'm going to word it pretty strongly) and we've discussed other stuff he could take to ex's. He's also said he wants to save for a decent laptop and I have said if he saves sensibly for a year I'll make a sizeable contribution to a decent laptop that won't totally clean out his spending account. The problem with that is that if we do that he will want to take it to ex's and then ex will be using it all the time, but we'll have to cross that bridge when we come to it.

Thank you for all the advice.