You can try to call a quality case manager

1-877-917-4380 and 93 is for laptops

or Jeff Utigard at 303-649-5406
is an executive with HP

Let me tell you a little secret. PC companies DO NOT GIVE A SHIT about consumers. They do not make the bulk of thier income from consumer purchases. Consumers actually make up quite a small piece of the pie.

If you want halfway decent tech support you HAVE to buy a business class machine. This is where most of the money is made so this is customer devision they take care of.

Think of it this way. Lets say your a car dealer. Lets say that I come in to buy one Lincon Towncar. Now lets say that the guy next to me wants to buy a 10 cars as company cars for a new Corperation that is opening shop in town. At this point you are one happy salesman. Both of us leave with our repective purchases. Now 3 months down the line you come into work and see the two of us sitting in the service area. Which of the two of us do you think you would speak to first?

Im not saying that this is the right thing to do for a business. Im just trying to explain why you are getting shit for service.
Also for those that DO have a business system I would suggest calling your respective PC makers and petition to have the support kept in the states. There are many good techs in India and the Philippines, but on the whole most of them just warm seats and handle call volume. BOTH HP and Dell are in the process of sending ALL of thier support out of country. The only ones that will still talk to US techs are systems under federal accounts.

I can handle anything up to and including a mainboard changeout myself so I figure any issues that come up, I'll just take care of it and the hell with the warranty.

I realize that not everyone is in a position to do this but if you know someone who is and can trust them, it can often be a whole lot easier on your state of mind to just get the problem taken care of locally than to deal with this ship it to them three times BS. Might cost a few bucks but the peace of mind is worth something too.

It's generally not the initial mistake that's the problem, but the enthusiasm and insistence with which certain companies refuse to correct their errors. Based on personal experience and Consumerist, I don't have too hard a time believing that whatever number of HP service tickets that goes wrong -- could be .01%, could be 50% -- all go horribly awry. And they deserve to be called out on it, though in HP's case, maybe we shouldn't waste our breath.

The power supply they had replaced, failed within a month. By that time, the desktop was 1 day out of warranty because the service center my call was directed to was in India and they were 10 hours ahead!!

They refused to repair it without charging money. The technical support person said that since my PC is out of warranty, he should not even be talking to me for free. I spit on them and got a new power supply from Newegg.com and replaced it myself.

"Thank you for your email and feedback. HP will be contacting you to discuss some solutions.
best,
-j"

We'll see where this goes.

@dave_coder: It's a consumer advocacy site. Good service doesn't require advocacy.

I got a compaq back in 2006. Stupid purchase. Horrible laptop/drivers/hardware. Can't wait for it to die. At least it kept me from making my last printer purchase with HP. Went with Canon and my all-in-one is the best.

It's sad that they seem to have let that go. I'm sure the motherboard design and laptop build are outsourced to companies in Asia, but it's a shame that HP doesn't seem to be enforcing quality standards upon its contractors. And the terrible support is inexcusable.

[Side rant: HP's marketing was always terrible since HP was a company staffed by engineers, but since turning over the keys to the MBA types, the engineering seems to have taken a dive.]

I switched to Mac 5 years ago (totally worth the additional price, if there indeed is one) and haven't looked back. When I purchase printers for my office, I still buy the occasional HP, but PCs and servers orders all go to Dell.

I have a problem with this report. Actually, I have several problems with it.

1) HP uses UPS for shipping parts and systems. The ARS program, unfortunately, relies on UPS being diligent in accurate delivery, but still...it isn't FedEx.

2) Payment? Payment is only done when a unit is out of warranty, or an exchange is involved outside warranty or as a guarantee of shipment of the defective unit back to HP.

3) Names? Each HP Support person is required to identify themselves by name, at least a first name. While this may be the name of the workstation assigned rather than the person, it is a key to identifying someone in the higher levels of the HP Food Chain. Without a name, it is impossible to trace.

4) Consumer model. I've warned before; buy Consumer grade, expect the worst. There are two levels of support, and frankly the Consumer level sucks. When it works, its great, but when it fails, good luck.

Bill and Dave are spinning, indeed...

Im going to sound like a real jerk when I say this, BUT:

this is why I have invested in a good screwdriver set, a soldering gun, a DOD disk and paitence to learn what's in a laptop. Oh, and a good ebay account. Since I have all of that in good standing, I don't have to worry about pimples the geek jockey trying to convince me he could 'fix my 'puter.

That was also before that witch Carly Fiorina destroyed the company. I'm surprised she's still in the tech industry - I'd want nothing to do with that woman.

I quit buying HP. They don't support their products, at least not their multifunction machines. When a new version of windows comes out, they do not develop new drivers for the product even if it is only a couple years old.

They will, though, have a headline (and a story!) on the off chance that HP actually makes good on this. And this isn't an isolated incident, as regulars here know. I'm not even opposed to companies messing up, they're bound to. I even mess up myself from time to time. But repeated mess-ups on a single account are indicative of a serious CS failing.

I've found with HP/Compaq that it definitely depends on which product line you're buying. If you're buying the consumer line (Presario/Pavilion), you'll get crap. If you buy the business line, yeah, you pay more, but you also get something that keeps working and is built with standard parts, not whatever HP is able to buy cheapest this week.
That said, for myself, I haven't bought anything but Toshiba in years. I finally replaced a 5 year old Toshiba laptop last year when I decided it was time to go to Vista, since the old one wouldn't support it. And I bought a new Toshiba.

+1 for Asus laptops. Yeah, their customer service isn't top notch, but the laptop is built extremely well with high end parts, so chances are you won't need them anyway. HP? Well, there's a reason you got it ON SALE. Trust me.

ahahaahahaha...

Thank you TOSHIBA. I've owned 5 Toshiba laptops, dropped 3 of them, spilled soda and coffee on two of them, and guess what? They all survived, except for my last one, which broke after I splashed my martini on it.

One, the motherboard failed after about a year's use.

I (stupidly) bought a second one but (smartly) bought the Fry's extended warranty. The second one, the motherboard crapped out about 2 months before the extended warranty expired. Fry's cheerfully ordered in a brand new (not refurb!) motherboard, replaced it, and my machine was good as new within about 2 weeks.

Oh, and the first machine? I found a flat-rate repair place that actually does component-level motherboard repairs on laptops, sent it in, and got it repaired for $125. It still works.

But I will never, ever buy another HP laptop.

This is why you use laptop coolers and take good care of your machine. Also, that's what an extended warranty is for with ON-SITE repairs.

@gtc: ASUS mainboards are top notch I'll agree. However, I sure hope their Laptop service and support is better than their mainboard service and support. It took them three weeks to get me a replacement fan for my A8N SLI Deluxe...A fan they KNEW was defective because boards that were on the shelves the day mine failed had been updated to a newer design.

I even tried getting them to replace the fan before it failed but no dice. They said there's nothing wrong with it they can't do anything. It was a real nightmare and to top it all off I couldn't access my data on my desktop PC. After that little incident I moved everything essential for work over to my Dell Laptop which was under warranty and could be fixed by me in less than 24 hours.

@JeffMc:
@RvLeshrac:

Actually, the Magnusson-Moss warranty act covers any consumer products that are sold with a warranty. That goes from cars to consumer electronics. One of the parts of the act states that the consumer is entitled to a replacement product or a full refund after a reasonable number of repairs. Unfortunately "Reasonable" is a tad bit ambiguous. But I think it was worded that way because 3 repairs on a car for the life of a car warranty isn't a huge issue (depending on what the problems were) But with something like a laptop 3 repairs can be a big deal especially if its for the same issue.

Now actual "Lemon Laws" are state-level laws that apply specifically to automobiles and specify what classifies a vehicle as a lemon for a buyback from the manufacturer.

I was an ardent HP customer/evangelist until my last purchase, and one recent purchase was a $10,000 workgroup printer.

That last purchase was an MFP that couldn't receive incoming faxes, couldn't make outgoing faxes overseas because it couldn't distinguish between a non-US ring and a US busy signal, and couldn't scan or duplicate US legal size documents. I did all the right things for six months to get it fixed or replaced under warranty and got nowhere. Their customer service consisted of refusing to do anything and telling me I should have bought a more expensive model. (I'm not sure why it's okay for a $500 MFP to not work per the manual.) I finally escalated to HP executive customer support and was bluntly told they weren't going to do anything but that I was welcome to slag them off on places like Consumerist. So I do.

Bill and Dave must roll in their graves on a daily basis.

the only good thing about HP USED TO BE that they would ship us parts and we could do the installs. Screens, motherboards, whatever. They ship to us, we take care of it. After they changed that policy (on the CC end), it was awful.

And I will never, EVER buy an HP laptop because of their dismal motherboard failure rate. I picked up an Asus at Best Buy because I've had incredible luck with their motherboards. Seeing as that's the most important part of a laptop, I'd trust in a good mobo manufacturer, not some mass-market fuck up. :P

They told me it would take 2-3 weeks to fix, and they shipped me a box next day. I (reluctantly) sent my computer back, and relegated myself to using an old ass computer for 3 weeks. 4 days later I had my computer back in my hand, fixed.

Now, I don't know if my experience was an anomaly (based on these reports I assume it was) but I just wanted to chime in and give my experience with HP.

@RvLeshrac: Yes, many companies do, but you have to get a sympathetic CSR or one of those dreaded "extended warranties" from the selling institution.

In either case, you're usually stuck with the same sub-par product you purchased in the first place, just with a different serial number.

I went to a local users group of people using HP software. HP had sent their VP in charge of worldwide support. You wouldn't believe the litany of problems that came from that room of about 40 people. EVERY company there had an issue with HP support, where tickets were ignored, tickets were marked "resolved" with no resolution, etc etc.

Even when buying a new product, a time you'd think they'd want quick support, they've now completely broken their license generating processes, by converting the whole process HP used to use, to groups that used to be part of Mercury (a company HP bought out.) It used to be you could get a new license, replacement license, or renewal license within 2 days of an order. It took us 5 months to get a permanent license on our OVO installation! Hearing from other people using HP support, our experience was not unusual!

It's actually pretty sad, as a lot of HP products are quite good, it's the support, and inter company logistics, that recently have been dragging the company down.

You buy cheap, you get cheap. There is a reason why their laptops are priced that low. You are going to pay for it in the long term, one way or the other.

@JeffMc:

Lemon Laws generally only apply to automobiles, though companies will sometimes have a similar provision in their warranties.

After two failed repairs from a tech who came to the house, I took over the situation and within 24 hours of contacting Dell's executive branches my wife had a shiny new laptop that Dell was selling for over $2000 - with upgraded screen, harddrive, cpu and ram.

All it takes is the right phonecall or email to the right person and all the problems will mysteriously fix themselves. Keep trying!

I think people avoid the email option because they either want instant gratification, or someone to yell at over the phone. Then they sit there stewing while they are on hold. Using email was surprisingly fast- I always heard back within a few hours, and it was much less stressful.

They did screw one thing up- the tech actually sent one email all the way from India, saying "I believe your zip code is actually xxxxx so we sent your laptop there instead." And even though I replied saying "uhh noooope I know my own zip code thanks," they still sent it to the wrong zip code. But it found its way to me fine in the end and I was satisfied with the speed of the service.

As for asking to speak to the specific tech who fixed your laptop? Are you kidding? Why? If you start making demands like that, no wonder they aren't responding to you.

The problem is that when a repair goes wrong, it often goes horribly, terribly wrong because HP seems more interested in covering themselves than in fixing the problem (or fixing the computer).

Any (every?) company will have something slip through the cracks. How they respond to those cases is what matters. I no longer buy or recommend HP computers (after 20 years as a mini-computer and PC customer) because they refused to acknowledge problems or to deal with them in good faith. I don't do business with a company I have to sue to force them to do the right thing.

Has anyone actually went direct to a service centre with a HP laptop to get it repaired and not have any problems?

Seriously thinking about getting an Apple next time, expensive as they are.

I work at a retail store which is an HP service center and HP repairs are almost always quick and accurate.

If the tech had been able to say, "yeah, you obviously have a bad cartridge because it's the only logical conclusion to draw from the simple but illuminating investigation you've done," I would have been happy. Instead, they made me put in yet another new cartridge, even though I had already fixed the problem with a new cartridge. I just wanted a replacement for the dud that started the whole mess. Also, they made me wipe out all my fax numbers and settings. Then, when they finally decided they could give me a new cartridge, they disconnected me while trying to make a transfer to whatever knucklehead handles that; One hour completely wasted.

I related this story, and the short version of my other two previous disastrous interactions with HP support, and told the sympathetic rep that I would not be buying HP for two years. If, after that time, they looked like they had gotten themselves together, I might try it again. She offered me $50 off on a new printer.

I asked her to make the check payable to Epson.

@wvFrugan: I second this. I would love, LOVE to know the name of the PR firm that attempts to do this so we can have a "robocall session" to their office about how much HP doesn't care.

use...AAA...at...AAA...ownrisk....CHOO!

This is ridiculous, and exactly why I stopped supporting HP after similar incidents.

I had a Toshiba satellite notebook that was "repaired" and sent back barely functional with a virus after they stripped my AV untility off the hard drive. Yeah, I broke that enough to get it lemoned before the warranty ran out. That'll teach those scally-wags!

I call dibs on slamming the poor pitiful HP corporate fool that posts here advising that they regret that mistakes were made & that HP cares.

The result of my EECB got me in contact with Mr. Jeff Utigard, an extremely helpful gentleman, that settled my problem with one phone call (literally 90 seconds after sending the EECB).

Jeff Utigard
HP ECR Denver
303 649-5406
jeff.utigard@hp.com