Macbook shuts down, charger does not charge then charges hours or days late

My daughter's macbook symptoms:
- shuts down all of a sudden
- when restarted, displays error message: date reset 2008 etc.
- When restarted, charger may or may not charge (Magsafe LED off). It may take days before it works again
Macbook under 3 year guarantee (contract says you get a new computer if it breaks down):
In French: www.fnac.com/guides/services/garantie-echange-neuf/default.asp?NID=0
In English via Google: http://tinyurl.com/6ayl5re
Was sent to repair (MSS repair centre, FNAC, France) . They said they did "un reset du système" = a
system reset .
Worked well at my home for 3 days.
Back to my daughter's: same thing happens.
Charger does not charge Magsafe LED off.
Taken to my home: charger charges magsafe red. But my daughter had moved the charger's parts tried other power sockets to no avail before Macbook repair.
Note that this macbook has a mildly loose magsafe port. Yet, moving the magsafe won't change anything while Mac is on. Loose Magsafe port has been reported to me as not an issue (some geek on a forum, and a genius at an applestore)
I suspect something wrong with motherboard. Loose magsafe port should not shut dow the machine should it ?
Back to repair centre: they say it's a "software problem" this is not covered by their 3 years guarantee. Which is plain false (look up - in French only - http://tinyurl.com/6avkvhy ) .
As I don't see which software problem that could be, I took it to the genius bar at Applestore's: Genius says bah ! not a software problem.
Says it's a motherboard failure. So he gives me a written estimate for motherboard repair. Indeed that may to help me battle with my 3-year guarantee and "FNAC" repair centre since they are not so smart.
Happy with this and having checked that the guarantee contract covers even for the alleged "sofware" problem, having an Applestore paper telling me the rub lies in the motherboard, here I am, sending FNAC a formal notice by registered mail (with a copy to my lawyer. An excellent one with the appropriate specialisation , and my other daughter, hence cheap).
But .... in the meantime, I'm using that faulty computer, and here I get another shutdown.
I was moving the computer softly to place it on a table, this pulled a little bit the charger's cable: screen goes black. Magsafe LED off.
I have to restart it, and I get the usual error message telling me the date is set earlier than 2008.
Same crash as usual. Note that my daughter says the shutdown never happened without the charger on, and shutdown did happen without movement nor strain on the cable.
But as I have my own Macbook, same as my daughter's, I perform an experiment.
- I plug my daughter's charger cable on MY Macbook: LED stays off !
- I plug MY Macbook 's charger cable on my daughter's Macbook: LED is on !
My impression is that there is a problem with my daughter's charger, isn't there ?
But how can a problem with the charger, its cable of the magsafe cause the Macbook 's clock to bet set back a few years ?
I have to point out that the battery is not dead, and behaves normally, so the charger suddenly stopping should not shut the computer down. I can use the computer on battery for hours and battery capacity is 86 % of theoretical.
Could a motherboard problem or some other Macbook problem cause charger dysfunction ?
This is important since while I may resort to buying a new charger if FNAC does not abide by their contract duties, if there is another problem than that of the charger, we'll be in trouble again sooner or later.
We know MSS FNAC have not been good at all (not my first untoward experience with them) and Applestore may be wrong or partially right.
Thanks for your ideas about this trouble.

I am having the exact same problem, although it only takes a few minutes for my computer to start charging again. What was the solution you found? My computer just returned from Apple today with a replaced thermal assembly, and I just had the problem repeat itself, not two hours after I picked it up from the postal service.

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