Here at Kitamura we have an industry leading courtesy laptop hire service. As with our TV repair and courtesy hire service, if we need to have your desktop computer or laptop in our workshop for extensive repairs lasting more than a day, we offer a laptop hire service to get you back working while you wait for repairs to your own system to be completed. We use laptops as they are portable, and easier for customers to use. It saves an engineer having to transport a full desktop to the customer's house and mess with wiring. We believe in convenience, so we offer this service all for free, as part of our customer care programme!

Laptop Hire Procedure

Once you agree to the extensive repair work to your own system being completed, we will then offer the hire of one of our modern laptops to you, free of charge! Yes, that's right, FREE! Our procedure works as follows:

• We will ask you to provide proof of identity and address, such as a passport, driving license, or bank statement, which we take copies of to prevent fraud in the event of damage by you of our equipment, and to prevent non-payment of damage charges. We loan out our expensive equipment for free, so need to be reassured that theft or fraud will not cause us problems. These document copies will be given to the Police or courts if needed.
• We set the courtesy laptop up with a base set of programs, such as office, antivirus, image programs, and all system updates.
• We will install any specific programs you need, if you bring us the discs or point us to websites to download software.
• We will transfer any files you may need, such as college work, business files, etc, from your own system so you can carry on with life as normal!
• Upon the return of our laptop following completion of repairs to your computer system, we transfer the new work from the laptop back to your own system! All for FREE!!

NOTE: We ALWAYS take photographs and notes of damage to our laptops before they leave with the customer, to prevent fraud. Any further damage on its return to us must be paid for.

Courtesy Laptop Specifications

All our courtesy laptops are modern high tech machines, ranging from Intel Core 2 Duo, Core i3/i5 and Core i7, each with at least 4 gigabytes of memory and 320 gigabyte hard disk drives, and DVD Rewriter drives. So customers often get a better system hired to them than their own computer! All our courtesy laptops are from well known reputable makes, such as Toshiba, Dell, Sony and Acer, so you know the equipment is reliable, as we are a company that is a laptop specialist!

Circumstances in which a courtesy laptop is offered

We offer a courtesy laptop in the event that your machine needs extensive repair in the following cases:

• When your system needs motherboard and circuit repair and you have authorised us to go ahead.
• If we have to wait for more than two days for parts to fix a non operational system.
• In cases of extensive data recovery, or hard drive circuit or mechanical repair.
• For students, teachers and businesspeople needing urgent use of a computer while theirs is out of service.

Courtesy Laptop Hire Rules & Conditions

We spend a lot of money and time purchasing, maintaining and upgrading our fleet of courtesy machines, and this is offered as a free service, so obviously we have some reasonable rules and conditions you must agree to at time of hire. They are simple conditions to protect our investment as a company, and you as our customer:

• The laptops MUST NOT be used for illegal downloading of copyrighted works, such as music, films, and software. Legal video and music streaming/paid download services such as BBC iPlayer, Spotify, Napster etc are permitted, at your own cost.
• They must NOT be used for downloading, viewing or sharing of pornography, terrorist material, or anything derogatory. Child pornography and engaging in paedophilia is especially despised by us as a company, we care about child welfare, this WILL be reported to the Police and relevant authorities, we WILL prosecute to the maximum under UK Law.
• Our courtesy machines MUST NOT be tampered with. This includes removing parts, upgrades, or disassembly.
• They MUST be treated with CARE. Any damage to the machines on their return to us MUST be paid for, and we will persue criminal damage charges if necessary. As mentioned above we photograph and note all damage to our courtesy laptops before they leave us to prevent fraud.
• In line with point 7 - "Free Loan of a Laptop Computer" as laid out in our Terms and Conditions Of Business, if the laptops are extensively damaged, lost or stolen, we reserve the right to charge a flat fee of £500 to cover replacement and/or repair. Refusal to pay will result in a criminal damage charge being filed with the Police, and all paperwork and photograph evidence being used in court. We will hold your original equipment until damage charges are paid in full, and if needed, we will take ownership to recoup costs.

On site repairs following failure

As long as the machine we hire to you is looked after, if it fails, or needs parts due to natural wear and tear while being used by you, we will repair it at no cost to you, on site at your home or wherever you are. If we can't do this due to extensive failure we will issue another machine exactly the same, and simply swap out the hard drive so you can carry on as if nothing happened with the minimum of downtime. We carry lots of the same machines for the exact reason of making it easy in case of failures, for both us and the customer!

But, if the failure and/or damage is deemed by our engineer to have been caused deliberately by either tampering or physical impact, you will be liable for repair or replacement charges as in the rules above depending of the extent of the damage. We are keen-eyed damage forensics engineers, and are trained to determine causes of damage.

Our initial trials of this service, and its permanent introduction have been highly successful. Customers have abided by our conditions, taking care of the equipment, and thus enjoying maximum benefit, for little cost, as all you pay is the cost of the repair of your own equipment, similar to that of a repair garage who lend out courtesy cars! We enjoy making life easy and respectful for our loyal customers, and this free courtesy service is one of the many ways we do this.