i would like to share a story that happened to me few days ago and shook me deeply.

we do it support and some development at the company i work for currently. got one of the boring cases of a faulty laptop to resolve. nothing comes up on the screen or external monitor via hdmi or vga.

took it apart, check what i could, motherboard issue. checked the warranty, still on. let's call the manufacturer, lenovo.

talked to support lady, got asked to reset to factory settings. there is a hidden pinhole on the site to do so. i did not believe, but indeed there is one. so keep your laptop with you if you don't want somebody to reset it for you as a joke :) anyway, nothing changed on the screen. we agreed to send it for repair.

she started to read long list of points lenovo is not responsible for, standard stuff like data loss etc. then she asked for local admin password. i politely refused, explaining that is's against our policies. she said they cannot accept the laptop if i do not pass the admin login. asked to talk to supervisor, she couldn't pass him\her on but can organize a callback. i went thru this one with lenovo, was waiting for call back 2 months, received none. i refused.

i needed the laptop sent, so tried different aproch. told her we do not know the password. she still kept on insisting they cannot take it on for repair without it. so i told her the password is 123. guess what? she did not believe me. told her that that's the password and please prove me wrong. she said, if the engineers discover the password provided is incorrect, they will charge me... please fix the screen and check the password, i said.

laptop is getting picked up today, will see how the story ends.

let me know what you think. it's really hard for me to understand why they need the password to repair the hardware. i'm really concerned why they asking for it.