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HP's Billing & Warranty Practices: Buyer Beware

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Chris Russell

Fri Sept 03 2010, 01:13AM

... not Russel!
Registered Member #1 Joined: Thu Jan 26 2006, 12:18AM
Location: Tempe, Arizona
Posts: 1052

Blackplasma wrote ...

The HP service culture in the USA sounds appalling. I'm not saying this to shit-stir, rather to remind myself that I was lucky in Aus to get the service I did. When the connections to both the left/right speakers failed almost entirely, I was able to get a satisfactory outcome.

I, too, feel pretty fortunate to have received good service from HP. In the past, I had nothing but wonderful things to say about HP's warranty process. I had a laptop with a defective CPU cooler, and got it replaced straight away. They got FedEx to deliver me a box and even pick it up on the same day I called, and it included free priority overnight shipping to the factory. Then they shipped it back to me, again priority overnight. I had the computer back and fully repaired in less than 48 hours, at no cost. This would have been around 2006.

In 2007, my girlfriend bought a laptop which had a GPU failure within a few months due to an incorrectly installed thermal mat. Same treatment, we had the computer back in just a few days. When her battery failed, it was similar -- they overnighted a brand new battery, along with packaging to return the old one. The GPU failed again after a year of hard use, just few weeks out of warranty, so I shelved it for parts. On a whim, many months later, I called HP and discovered the GPU failure was a known problem, and that they'd extended the warranty by another year. Happily, I was able to send it in and get it repaired via HP's speedy service.

When I began researching a brand of netbook to purchase in late 2009, I automatically thought of HP first. However, after hearing about Dave's experience, I decided to check the warranty terms. I was rather surprised to discover that HP's new netbooks and laptops include an utterly dismal warranty. Should something break, they'll fix it, but the customer must ship the computer to HP at their own expense, in specially approved packaging. If the user doesn't have the specially approved packaging, it costs $30 to purchase. So what was once free and speedy would have instead been slow and costly -- around $50, all told, to get a warranty repair done. I did ultimately end up buying a couple of HP netbooks (after discovering that pretty much every other netbook in my price and feature range had the same warranty policy), but I stripped my purchase way down and only spent about half as much as I was planning. As Dave mentioned above, just imagine that they're disposable, and budget accordingly -- either that, or be prepared to plunk down as much as 40% more for a proper warranty plan.

It's pretty sad just how many companies will not stand behind their products any longer.

Adam Munich

Fri Sept 03 2010, 01:14PM

Registered Member #2893 Joined: Tue Jun 01 2010, 09:25PM
Location: Cali-forn. i. a.
Posts: 2242

Personally, I'll never buy from HP. They use Hitachi hard drives, and every Hitachi I've ever had has failed catastrophically (inside desktops, no abuse). Head crashes, dozens of broken sectors, mysteriously lost files... It's never been good.

I like asus personally. They are the most well built computers from my experience with them. I have a balcony type thing in my living room with a couch under it. Every morning, (while my PC is off), I drop it 12ft onto the hard cushion couch; because I'm too lazy to carry it down the stairs. I drop the thing while it's on nearly twice a week too, and it's fine. Best of all, they use seagate HDDs. I've never had a seagate fail. EVER.

Hon1nbo

Fri Sept 03 2010, 02:37PM

Registered Member #902 Joined: Sun Jul 15 2007, 08:17PM
Location: Pacific Northwest USA
Posts: 1042

I had good experiences with HP back when the Pentium 4 was new, after that it's been downhill. Now I avoid them whenever possible due to low build qualities and support. I was helping someone fix and possibly replace what was thought to be a faulty drive, turns out even though there is only a SINGLE SATA drive in the computer they installed it as a RAID configuration in the BIOS rather than ATA or AHCI... still don't understand why they did that, they even state on their site that RAID is for multiple drives only.

Anyways, I also Officially vowed to never get another once people were reporting that their warranty was VOIDED by installing Linux on their machines, even if alongside windows without touching the backup partition. They "officially" state that it does not void the warranty, but when factored in with incompetent support personnel and an already bad service rep, it just makes things much worse for getting service

-Jimmy

Mike

Sat Sept 04 2010, 12:21AM

Registered Member #58 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:40AM
Location: Tri-Cities, Washington, US
Posts: 317

Yeah I had great experience with both HP Laptops and their warranty service (I got two replacement AC adapters, very quick warranty fixes) but that was a year or two ago. I don't mean to put down your situation any way but this sounds like one shitty isolated incident. In most cases the people at HP I've dealt with are willing to work with you. Sounds like you got the shit stick end of every one working there.

On a side note, Toshibas are great!

Reaching

Sat Sept 04 2010, 12:56PM

Registered Member #76 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 10:04AM
Location: Hemer, Germany
Posts: 458

oh yeah, HP.. Got some really nice desktops (elite 7100mt) for some of our customers. we installed a matrox f1400 graphics card with fibre optic connection in one of those elite desktops^^ after some hours of no luck, and killing win7 32bit^^ etc we called the hp support germany. all you get is a constant endless string of computer voices, and calling 1,2 ,3 on the telephone.. you get stuck for about 5 or 10minutes or the connection cancels ,, duud duud duud... wow thats service.. after i called the trader hotline they couldnt help me too but they gave me the combination that i have to call while in the hp hotline ,lol (you have to know this combination to get a service person on the phone or you will last forever in an endless string of music and computer voices) wow thats service^^.

after several minutes i got a person on the phone! wow. This person had an extremely hard russian accent that i could barely understand. i tried to describe the problem at first, but then she wanted the serial number, product number, email adress phone number etc?^^ ookk .. what they want with my mail adress to get a problem solved on one of their desktop pcs???.. all i wanted to know was just the keyboard combination that i have to press while the desktop is booting up, to get in the hp menue for restoring the fu** win 7 OS..
she couldnt help me with that problem!!! Uncle google said its the F11 Key,, wow. thats nuts.. but now i get some OS dvds in the mail within a few days.. (there was not a single CD or DVD nor something else in the desktop pc packaging)

Conundrum

Sun Sept 05 2010, 12:57AM

Registered Member #96 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4062

@dave, i had a similar problem on my aspire one.
in my case the webcam went "bad" causing a BSOD randomly until I disconnected the cable..

seems to be a common problem as it is hardwired to the motherboard it seems.

also, i have had weird problems on other laptops caused by a broken solder joint on the CCFL backlight, the high voltage return always finds a way back though normally not where it should judging by the burn marks.

its a nasty fault and can lead to a dead screen if neglected.

regards, -A

"Bother" said Pooh, as the Krenim opened fire...

IntraWinding

Sun Sept 05 2010, 11:54AM

Registered Member #2261 Joined: Mon Aug 03 2009, 01:19AM
Location: London, UK
Posts: 581

I used to have such respect for HP. You can see why they split their traditional business off as Agilent.
I interpreted that split as a consequence of the pressures of the market place meaning they wouldn't be able to build computer equipment to the same standard as their electronic test equipment and didn't want that lower quality range to damage their reputation for higher quality equipment. Never the less I expected them to continue to produce excellent computer equipment so this is a sad state of affairs.

There must be a lot of people suffering similar problems to you. Over hear you can have a big effect on misbehaving companies if you can get the problem reported on the popular consumer TV program 'Watchdog'

. Do you have something similar over there?

radiotech

Sun Sept 05 2010, 03:30PM

Registered Member #2463 Joined: Wed Nov 11 2009, 03:49AM
Location:
Posts: 1546

Not to minimize the specific problem here but there is difference in companies now. Long before the internet I was service manager for a large consumer electronics firm and have heard the same tale over and over. Once I tried to enforce the conditions of an international warranty (we were at war with grey marketeers at the time). The gentleman smiled and left. A while later I recieved a phonecall from the managing director instructing me to arrange immediate repairs on the unit. It turns out the customer was a supreme court justice who knew that the warranty could be enforced despite what we were
doing. The point is companies now have insulated their executive departments from the public so any justice for customers is so difficult to get most people just give up.

Adam Munich

Sun Sept 05 2010, 04:35PM

Registered Member #2893 Joined: Tue Jun 01 2010, 09:25PM
Location: Cali-forn. i. a.
Posts: 2242

For the record, Microsoft has excellent customer service when it deals with the x-box. All you need to do is call them up, tell them it's broken, and in 3 days you get a prepaid box to send it back in. Then a new one comes your way, even if it's out of warranty. Sometimes you'll even get a free game.

radiotech

Sun Sept 05 2010, 06:04PM

Registered Member #2463 Joined: Wed Nov 11 2009, 03:49AM
Location:
Posts: 1546

Another good seller is the Nuts & Volts magazine gadget sales. When my new Kill-aWatt meter went bad, after a phone call, they sent a new one out free along with a return packasge for the defective one.

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