Customer Service

I’m very angry at HP right now.

I’m trying to fix a laptop that belongs to a girl whose sister is engaged to my oldest son. This laptop is out of warranty. I have no problem fixing it but it would be nice if someone from HP would talk to me without requiring me to give them my credit card number.

Here’s the problem: I get a disk read error when I try to boot up. It won’t go any farther than that. It won’t let me boot to Safe Mode or to a C prompt. How the heck am I supposed to fix it if I can’t go anywhere? The Windows XP CD that comes with the computer didn’t help, either. UGH! All I wanted from HP was to know if there was a secret way to get to Safe Mode or a C Prompt. I didn’t want them to troubleshoot for me; I didn’t want much of anything at all. What a shame that HP doesn’t stand behind their products. What a shame that their tech support has become so shoddy.

My guess on this machine is bad RAM. But it’s just a guess and I’m repairing as a favor so I don’t want to tell this girl to buy RAM if that’s not the problem. I don’t think it’s a bad hard drive since the diagnostic I ran came back with a clean bill of health. Perhaps it’s time to ask about a life insurance quote on this HP laptop so we can bury it.

I’m really disappointed in HP right now. I’d recommended them before because I was always able to get help for products, even when they’d lived beyond their warranties. That’s why I’ve got an HP desktop and laptop of my own, 3 HP printers, an Ipaq and an HP camera.

I guess we can add HP to the list of companies that now don’t care about their customers. I think companies know they can treat the consumer badly and we’ll keep coming back for more. Well, not this consumer. Not this time.

Oh, and if anyone knows about computers and has an idea about this problem, speak up. Before I buy RAM.