Costco Concierge - A semi-sweet ending

Thought I'd share my support story, since HP usually gets a bad rap with support, they weren't essentially too helpful with me even through Costco in a way.
Basically, a couple nights ago, I had busted my optical drive, was burning a disc through iTunes (a Audio CD), canceled it, and took the disc out, and next thing I knew my drive couldn't read any form of CD's, but it could read and write to any DVDs I threw at it. I've worked as a PC Tech before at a local shop, did some diagnostics to make sure it wasn't the OS, basically tried to boot a bootable CD. That didn't work (used Ubuntu and its variants, WinXP, and Ultimate Boot Disc). DVDs booted up as normal, tested with Ubuntu and Vista discs.
Knowingly that customer support would tell me to try a Factory Restore, I proceeded that path for the next 5 hours, backing up and the restore process (probably didn't even need to do this, but did in case I had to send it in).
Anyways, the next day, called Costco Concierge, since I bought it from them (along with a nice 2nd year warranty extension for free from them, and a 3rd year due to using AMEX; all free warranty extensions). Really nice people trying to fix it, but obviously using Google to troubleshoot, because I tried using Google as well, and did all I could find in hopes that something might turn up (deleting registry filters, and looking for firmware updates). After about 30 - 40 minutes troubleshooting that way, the Costco rep then proceeded as normal and connected me to the Third Tier Support of HP, essentially, bypassing the sass of the lower tier support.
HP rep was nice on the phone, stated it was Third Tier support specially for Costco members, which seemed all great an all. He obtained all the info from the Costco rep (was a three way call), and basically just went straight to the solution, which was great, no more troubleshooting. HP rep gave two choices, either send the part to me to fix myself (would not void warranty, asked him twice about this), or they send a box to me, which I stick my laptop in and send back to them, and wait for it to get back (which I did not want to deal with, didn't want it to come back with more damage like other stories have suggested from this forum). I took up the CSR (customer service repair) where I repair it myself (was suppose to be a literally less than a minute fix, but more on that in a second). So we verified it was really me, took my information down, and I got myself a tracking number. All in all the phone call was about an hour, not bad I thought.
However, during the chat with the HP rep, totally forgot to make sure I got the right bezel color for my laptop, since there was an SE, a Bronze, and a Silver bezel for this particular model from HP. One can guess what happened, when the parcel arrived next day (yeah it's great, overnight shipping, got here in the afternoon), I got a Bronze finished optical drive. I was like great, I should have expected this from HP (I did ask though if it was the right one, but I only asked once during the call, I didn't really specify color). Kinda ticked me off that they couldn't even get color right (they do have my serial number and what not, and I'm pretty sure that shows the specifications of my laptop when they access it in their registration database). Added another 2 minutes to my repair process of having to pop off the old faceplate and new one, and switch em. Also to add, the new faceplate was actually slightly scruffed from how it was packed I think, but it mostly rubbed off. All was left was to send back the defective unit to HP.
New drive works well, might be a little quieter than my previous drive. Just shows how bad HP support still is even at the "Third Tier." IMO if HP wants to compete with Apple, they got nice designs, decent build quality, but they are really lacking in customer support, which can probably be said for almost all the other PC makers.

 

well your laptop is still a bit cheaper than a macbook. but congratz on the semisweet ending