More Surface Pro 4 devices to be replaced due to faulty hardware

Around the middle of this year, a firmware update for Microsoft Surface Pro 4 devices was released. Quickly afterwards, reports started coming in of display and pen issues among many other things, and another update fiasco began to unfold.

What was the original problem

What happened was that Microsoft issued a firmware update in July 2018 that was meant to give the Surface Pro 4 lots of new improvements. Unfortunately for Microsoft, what the update allegedly did was screw up many a display with no possibility of a workaround.

Back to the issue in hand

Apparently, Microsoft started to replace some units fairly quickly (for a tech company anyway). Now, according to new reports, Microsoft has decided to speed up the process.

Of course, you will have to reach out to support to get the ball rolling but we’ll assume that if you were affected by this update, you have already done that. So, reach out to support (again) and get the ball rolling on a new surface.

But you may need to be quick. As I was researching this article, I came across one website that pointed out something I hadn’t cottoned on to. Since Microsoft no longer makes the Surface Pro 4, all the replacements must be coming from existing stock. How many Surface Pro 4s have they got, I wonder?

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What’s being said by whom?

One place I recommend you check out is the Microsoft Answers page that has the original complaint and then all the usual stuff afterwards. It’s very entertaining. Especially the bits where the people who work for Microsoft chime in with ‘help’. Well, entertaining if you don’t have a Microsoft Surface Pro 4. Annoying as heck for people who do.

Apart from throwing their moderators to the wolves, Microsoft is as talkative as ever (when things go wrong). For major screw-ups, Microsoft’s usual tactic is to tell all and sundry that it is ‘investigating’ the issue, which is exactly what it has done here.

What caused the problem?

Who knows? It appears that Microsoft still has no idea what caused the problem in the first place. This is not only highly embarrassing but also begs the question about the use of the insider program again. If I remember rightly, both the fast and slow rings were skipped for the Windows 10 1809 update, and that ended pretty badly, although no machines have needed to be replaced as far as I am aware.

It’s only fair to assume that the firmware update for the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 must have skipped the insider program altogether as well, otherwise how did this major (and extremely costly) error not get picked up?

Wrapping it all up

What Microsoft has not addressed yet is the fact that for around five months, its customers have been led the old merry runaround. I would hate to suggest that it was presumably to give Microsoft’s legal department a chance to see if they could get out of replacing devices that were no longer under warranty, or better yet, get out of doing anything at all. That would be a terrible thing to suggest. Anyway, it would appear the big bosses just got the bad news and it is time to cough up.

Was your Microsoft Surface Pro 4 affected by this latest debacle? If so, let us know how you get on with fixing the problem or getting a replacement. We’d love to here from you.

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