Facing shipping costs when sending my 8890 in for repairs under warranty was a major reservation for me when buying, but I gambled and got it anyway hoping I wouldnt need to pay the £200 shipping. On wednesday my AC adapter ceased to be detected, although the power pack itself was still working fine, the laptop refused to recognise it in any way, so I used my 90 minutes of battery backing up my stuff and got ready to RMA it. I thought I'd ask sager about it first though and they send me this reply:
I found this was listed on the clevo site (down at the moment), along with a few asian centres and a German one:

Gold Star Computer GmbH
Rochusstr.2
41352 Korschenbroich
Tel : 49-2161-998520
Fax : 49-2161-9985219
E-mail :service@clevo-computer.de

I thought I'd post these to make sure no other Europeans are put off by shipping prospects like I almost was. I havent had chance to contact them yet and as you can see Sager was sparing in the details, so I'm not absolutely sure that these service centres offer support under the sager warranty, but I'm confident and hopeful.

Robert,

That's a nasty situation!

I doubled batteries and power adapters but what the heck if the computer does not recognize them. Well I am in the Netherlands and hope not to need your experience in the matter. Thanks anyway!

Good luck! - and keep us posted!

Alright. Clevo support centres will repair a laptop within its first year under warranty, but they dont cover the bits not fitted by them (hard drives, cpu and memory), and actually require you to remove these before sending to them. The worst part of it all is that they charge £100 labour on all work (even under warranty), and £15 postage.

They also repair laptops not covered by a warranty, obviously at a cost, and charge £50 diagnosis if they cant do anything, or you decide not to go ahead with the repairs (aka a deposit).

I've asked sager about whether its ok to go removing cpu etc, and they said they'll continue to cover the components that clevo wont, providing they arent damaged while removing / replacing. I think that's pretty generous compared to other companies, who'll void all warranties if you go anywhere near a screwdriver.

It still works out considerably cheaper for me than sending back to Sager, and I have the piece of mind that my hard drives will not be formatted because I'm not sending them in, so my 8890 will be on its way to clevo UK as soon as I get an RMA number off them (btw, that RMA application form was one of the most confusing forms I've ever had to fill out)