Me and my brother bother have dell laptops so same power packs
about 2 weeks they got mixed up and i have been using his and he has been using mine
he brings it back to me today with exposed/loose wires, says its broken and wants his back!!!!
I reckons he owes me a new power pack coz it broke when he had it
He says its not his problem because its 3 years old
Whats the vote?
Do i have to buy another?
He has to buy me a new one?
We got 50/50 because its old
Just go 50/50, it's not like he broke your laptop or something. To the poster who calls a mac a solution, I'm not sure if that's a good idea considering OP and brother are nitpicking about 20-30$ in value and a macbook pro costs at least $1.6K. Also, my friend had an apartment fire due to a faulty charger.
This seems like a fairly easy situation to resolve.
Normally in this spot its awkward cuz like you borrowed someone's equipment (camera or whatever) and break it, so you obviously need to reimburse them somehow. But since it was a used camera, paying for a brand new one isn't totally fair since they end up ahead. Yet in this case, you have an identical replacement, in "his" used power pack. It seems obvious that it should just be treated as if you never switched, he would buy a new one costing him the price but upgrading to a new one which will last longer.
The only complexity would be if he didn't actually do anything specific to the cord, and it just happened to wear out while he was using it. In which case you should just give him back his and buy a new one yourself. If it's unclear whether it broke due to normal wear or he did something specific, then some type of split seems fair. If you do split I would probably have the person who ends up with the new cord paying a bit more.
My roomate broke my power charger on my dell and obviously didn't apologize cuz I consider him AOS (aspergers or something) and doesn't understand human decency. My solution is that I bought a new computer cuz it was 3 years old and gave my old one to my little brother for himself to buy a new battery and charger. Dell's power situation, overheating and depreciating, is really annoying to deal with anyways.