Buying an HP laptop is risky business

On roughly Feb. 22, 2009, my 2-month old HP Pavilion dv5-1150us computer locked up. I had to do a hard reboot, and the computer immediately went into system recovery mode. I continued to do that until the next day. Because the laptop had nearly $1200 of Adode software from my out-of-state employer (who does not give us disks for licensing reasons), I called HP tech support to see if they could walk me through fixing the issue without wiping out the entire hard drive and losing the software. After 3 hours of my cell phone minutes the HP techies from India to the Phillipines sent me on wild goose chases, telling me to go to Circuit City and Wal-Mart as authorized service centers, to simplistic things such as unplugging the computer. One rep told me that although I had an HP warranty, that I had to go back to Staples to facilitate the repair/replace. Of course, Staples said it was not their responsibility and an teenage-looking Staples customer service leader "supervisor" repeatedly told me that the problem was my fault because I had not purchased the Staples Easy Tech warranty. Besides being unexperienced and arrogant, this supervisor only made me angerier as the store warranty does not kick in until after the manufacturer warranty ends. A nice Staples clerk helped me escalate the matter with an HP telephone rep (we had spent about another hour or more on the telephone.) HP told me it could take at least 3 days for a case manager to call me! I said that I would then escalate this matter for three days online and with picketing,informing other customers of the craziness that is buying an HP laptop. The saga continued but in a nutshell, I lost my $1200 in software and all the HP case manager could say was they don't have any responisibility for my losses, including time, cell phone minutes and software, that they would not replace the laptop because of its "age" and because I did not meet requirements, that before they would do anything, I'd have have to use recovery procedures, wiping out the hard drive and losing my software, BEFORE, HP would do anything else with the laptop. What a mess! I will never buy another HP laptop in my life!

Fed up