Envy 14 - never again HP!

I bought an Envy 14 almost a year ago. Shortly after, I moved to the middle east and realized that the camera and mic did not work. To make a long story short, I ended up coming back to the US for a week on business, and 3 seperate HP tech guys on the internet chat line confirmed that if I got my computer to them ASAP when I landed, they would expedite the repair so that it could be sent back to my hotel before the end of the week.

Aside from a broken laptop, so far so good.

Once the repair centre gets my Envy, the nightmare begins. They can not get my computer back to me and after numerous calls with their customer service case managers, I quickly realize that no one is willing to help me, despite 3 HP employees telling me they could get the job done. I had emails ignored, I even had one of their senior case managers hang up on me during one of our phone calls because I asked him nicely not to be rude to me. Again, to make a long story short, they ended up having my computer for 4 months because I did not have a residential address in the US for them to ship it to (I had to wait unil my Dad crossed the border from Canada). All of this depite 3 HP employees in tech saying they would help me.

And now, the best part... 2 months after I get my computer back, the camera and mic don't work again.

So, to summarize my experience with HP:

1) My top-of-the line computer is poor quality.

2) HP case managers are completely lacking in empathy and don't care about providing good service.

3) HP's repair centre, it would seem, are as concerned with doing a good job as their case managers.

By far, the worst consumer experience of my life.

I might just have to go apple... I used to think they were very expensive but I am really starting to see a laptop more in terms of value, and not price... a cheap computer that breaks down all the time is really not worth the price.

I can deal with faulty equipment, but I really have a hard time dealing with the attorcious service I received from HP over the last 6 months.

Buyers beware...

 

Sorry you had a bad experience. Feel better after venting?

 

A crying shame, that. The reps probably weren't authorized to make promises of that sort. They should be held accountable.

Though, given your particular circumstance, going with Apple wouldn't have been any better. Not customer service-wise or quality wise for your particular scenario. If your situation was strictly a domestic one, Apple would probably have been better. But that one week window that you had would be hard to fulfill by any consumer notebook PC manufacture's customer service and repair.

What you'd need is business class service and support. Lenovo would have been a step up in this regard. Certainly an HP Elitebook would have provided better support. Much better. I was astounded by the difference between HP's consumer support as compared to their business support. Night and day. They do much of their support overnight. For instance, for my Elitebook tablet, I thought my pen might be a little flaky. Called HP Elitebook support and asked for another pen. It was at my residence the next morning free of charge. Fedex driver woke me up with a bell ring and door knock.

See what I mean?

While the Envy is a top of the line notebook. It's still a consumer division notebook.

 

Hello Starrbuck,

I was not venting to feel better. I was telling my story so that people consider all the facts. HP talk non-stop about customer service but in my experience it was rubbish so I thought people should know.

Is that OK?

 

Hello 2.0,

Thanks for the reply. To be honest, it's not the missing the 1 week window that was most troublesome, it was the way their case managers acted after that. It was a real disgrace. I started my career in customer service, and it really is not rocket science. You put yourself in the customer's shoes, and act accordingly. There was a shocking lack of empathy from their team.

Maybe you are right about the consumer vs. business line, but something tells me the chances of a macbook arriving DOA vis-a-vis the camera and mic would be less than with HP, and I would bet money that if I sent it back to apple it would not breakdown again after 3-4 uses.

Poor initial quality, poor customer service, and poor repair. The perfect storm.

 

I have a few thoughts to add, but I have to say I find bracque's comments and assessments to be spot-on overall. He does not sound like a whiner or a person with unreasonable expectations; he sounds like the owner of a computer who has had the all-too-common experience of being burned by crummy support staff. I don't think he is necessarily exaggerating calling this the worst conxumer experience of his life. There is a sense of really feeling violated when you've made one of the bigger purchases of your life, for a product you really depend on, and find you are hung out to dry when you have problems.

I'm not an Apple fan (see sig!) but I am inclined to agree that their hardware and operating software/drivers are more reliable out of the box and over time than that of any Windows laptop brand, but that once you have a problem, they are not much better at taking care of things than any other major brand. (On top of everything else, you were unfortunately trying to get support from a company that was telling the world and its employees that it didn't want to be in that business anymore. Not good for employee morale, service ethic or customer relations.)

Mr. Two as always has great advice, but having owned half a dozen HP computers (3 consumer, 3 business class) over the past few years, I am sorry to report that overall, neither side of that company delivers consistent appropriate customer or technical support. At times either division can give superb service but many times both can be shockingly bad, the people worse than incompetent - downright offensive and sometimes threatening, particularly the case managers. From both my own experience and what I've heard from others, no one individual or small business can count on good service, even when buying business class gear, whatever the brand. See below for a strategy to work around this inevitablility.

It is also the case that the support from these "global" brands is extremely uneven from country to country. I personally would never generalize about any company's service to non-US customers because I have never had to obtain service from another country.

I tend to think at the consumer level you often do best buying last year's leading edge stuff, clearance or mfr refurb, at 1/2 price and have less invested in your gear so you can junk it occasionally without taking a financial bath. Not that you will be more likely to have to junk it; usually these will be every bit as capable for your needs as today's hottest products, but instead of buying version 1.0 of any product you get it after the design/production bugs have been worked out and either the company or the user community have provided solid drivers. That's on top of paying as little as 50% as much for functionally equivalent hardware. And definitely only buy stuff you can get refunded in full for at least 21 days (HP will usually stretch that to 30 or more) so you never have to live with a lemon.

I think Bracque's biggest problems here stemmed from buying a computer in one country and shortly thereafter moving a couple of continents away! Not that he had a choice, I'm sure. But if you aren't going to be in a country - or, with on-site business class service, an urban area - that can provide good support, it does pay to buy gear that has a statistically higher chance of working fine out of the box and staying that way. Either that, or use my philosophy and buy two of last year's stars for the price of one new model (perhaps one ultraportable and one more substantial, to cover different needs); that way you can send one of them away to bounce around a company's crappy service organization without having your life disrupted.

Good luck. You have earned the right to gripe and your "warnings" are well-heeded by others.

Sorry, I apparently had the need to vent some myself. :/ I tell truths though, promise.

 

Thanks for the information in this thread. It really sounds so typical of customer "service" in general these days. I bet you could remove the references to the actual model and maker and it could be true with any of them.

The story seemed doomed from the start. A one week window for a repair is exceedingly small. It would seem the only chance of success would have been to drop the machine to a trusted partner that had all the needed parts for a Envy 14, and was willing to drop everything to fix this machine in that window. Unless you already had a partner lined up like that, there isn't much chance for success.

That doesn't let HP or any other maker off the hook. I agree if someone makes a promise, they should honor it. But we all know in this day and age verbal promises seem to mean nothing. It sucks. You really should not have to record conversations, take down names and dates, etc.

I don't blame you at all for not wanting to ever buy HP again. I just wonder if there are any makers we can trust.

 

Color me lucky but I haven't had a "real" problem with any manufacturer. Little issues here and there. But they were always resolved and usually with a better than expected result. I know others that have had the same experience as myself with different manufacturers.

I've also personally known others who had bad experiences.

I'd like to do a study to find out what might be the catalyst for a bad experiences or is it just hit or miss?

 

Hey bracque,
I sent my Envy 14 in for repair and they received it around 12/20 (I purchased accidental protection - 4 years!). I've been calling them to figure out what's going on/what's happening and they haven't been very helpful. One rep told me the screen couldn't be ordered and they'd have to replace the laptop. Now my case manager is telling me he has no idea why anybody would say that.

What exactly did you do to finally get your laptop back?

 

When did you get your Envy 14? Do you know if it has the Radiance screen? They went out of stock a long time ago, so if you've got a broken Radiance screen they're not going to be able to fix it for you. If that's the case, get them to send the best replacement they can - probably an Envy 15 with IPS and an SSD.

bracque's issue was that he expected HP's consumer repair service to get his notebook to him within a week of it being sent in, which is generally not going to happen unless you get really lucky. Beyond that, it's possible that he sent the computer in for a simple driver issue in the first place, but who knows, maybe the camera and mic really did fail twice in a couple months...

 

I got my Envy 14 summer of 2010, and it has (had) Radiance. They haven't offered a replacement because they are waiting for the repair center's status, or at least that's what they're saying.

 

You can call to try to expedite the process, or just wait until they're ready, but they're almost definitely going to offer you a replacement. I would advise against accepting even a fully-maxed Envy 14, since the current generation is getting old and has a crappy screen. Make them give you an IPS Envy 15 or better.