HP=welfare of laptops?

Wow... very informative! Haven't had any issues with support.

Oh, wait, what about that time where Dell tried to CON me out of cash to replace a failed hard drive? "Ohh no Sir, we would also have to fix the screen that has a slight issue for £xxx.xx". All customer services have issues.

 

Yeah i would agree with all computer manufacters having problems and generally poor customer service but hp seems to be one that stands out of the rest (not in a good way). Last week on friday i contacted hp customer support about a hp laptop (dv6-7013cl) where i ordered the screen and needed the little sticker that covers the bottom of the lcd bezel hiding the 4 screws you need to remove. I used partsurfer.hp.com to browse the list of parts and noticed that every part in the display required the speaker mesh sticker. But the speaker mesh sticker was not anywhere in the parts list.

HP PartSurfer

Here's a list a short list of different parts in the display

682046-001 ANTENNA - Speaker mesh sticker needed
682052-001 DSPLY BEZEL ALU - Speaker mesh sticker needed
682054-001 DSPLY CABLE High Definition - Speaker mesh sticker needed
682064-001 Display HINGES With BRACKETS - Speaker mesh sticker needed
682047-001 DSPLY BACK COVER ALU - Speaker mesh sticker needed
682065-001 15.6 Inch BrightView Display HU DISCRETE ALU - Speaker mesh sticker needed
682089-001 DISPLAY RAW PANEL BrightView High Definition - Speaker mesh sticker needed
682093-001 DISPLAY SCREW - Speaker mesh sticker needed
682096-001 SPEAKER FRONT - Speaker mesh sticker needed

I spoke with 7 different people, first the parts people then tech support then parts again, then got stuck on hold for 10 mins so i called back. Back and forth to different people for about and hour and 45 mins. While i was on hold waiting for hp to figure out the part number i was googling everything i could to find the part number for this sticker. I came across some Australian site that said the sticker is included with the service covers.

682088-001 SERVICE COVERS

So with this new found information i told the woman who was trying to help me the specific part number to see if she could actually pull the part and check it for me. She argued with me for about 20 mins, i got frustrated and yelled at her and had to explain everything over (like i had explained to the previous 7 people). She said she couldn't physically pull the part and the part costs 40 dollars plus shipping. Then she told me i could call depot international to get it sent to a office depot store to save shipping. So i called them and the woman there said she couldn't help me, i had to have an account. So then i called back and got a different person and had to explain all over again and waste more time.

On the product support page you can get access to the service manual

http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c03216834.pdf

On page 27 at the bottom you can find a better description of the service covers (too bad partsurfer doesn't have this description)

Service cover (includes speaker grilles and front rubber feet) 682088-001

You have to buy this part new, and it comes with the plastic bottom cover, rubber feet and the god damn sticker. If you buy this part used you will only get the bottom plastic panel. Obviously you can't buy just the sticker.

HP needs to figure out what the hell they're doing when they design these laptops. If there's a sticker needed that is described as a "speaker mesh sticker" there needs to be a part number that says "speaker mesh sticker". It's a joke that i spent over 2 hours on the phone with several different people (none which could help me find this part). In the end i gave the customer the part number and told them if a sticker is worth $45+ then they can order it from hp and i'll install it for them.

Now keep in mind it's not the customer service employees that get the blame for this. Everyone i talked to tried to help me and for the most part were courteous and polite. They didn't have the information they needed to help me. This is hp's fault in the information their service department gets, not their employees.

 

How many have you called? Have you called Lenovo support? Sony? Toshiba? Have you owned that many machines? Over the years I have called a few of them and it either goes well or doesn't. I've also given HP support the part numbers as they didn't know what to select but I cannot honestly expect them to know everything as they've probably not even SEEN 90% of these machines that we use. That, of course, is no excuse but this is a witch hunt. Oh well. It's easier to complain than to be positive I suppose.

 

HP support is crap, but that comes in the form of drivers. You are lucky, LUCKY if you see a single driver update past what the laptops release with.

Their driver testing is poor as well. They released Windows 8 drivers for my laptop that have been in testing since September (until now). They install fine, but they break brightness control in the OS, and the backlit keys do not turn back on from resume.
The only thing sadder than this release, is knowing that they probably won't release an update to it to fix what they broke in the first place. In HP's mind that is ok because the machine didn't ship with Window 8.

Their pathetic software support is the reason why I no longer recommend HP to anyone.

 

This is common across all manufacturers right now with the Intel Ivy Bridge HD 4000 video, NOT JUST HP!

 

I'm on Sandy Bridge though. Even less of an excuse for them. You don't test drivers for a month and not fix an obvious issue like brightness. Either their testers are inept, or they don't care. It could be either or both.

 

In the past few years i've probably called them all a couple times or more. Though i know i've probably called dell the most. It's always for little parts you can't find anywhere (usually thermal pads for gpu's that disintegrate from the massive amount of heat being passed through them).

I think i've only called ibm to get a heatsink for an older thinkpad, though hp i call for questions if partsurfer doesn't match up. Of course partsurfer is better than any of the other partslist out there, but you used to be able to just pull the part number directly from the part. Hp changed that as well, now there's not usually a "replace with hp spare XXXXXX-XXX" sticker anymore.

I'd say the best customer support is either asus or toshiba. Though toshiba has really gone down hill in terms of reliability their customer support is setup to escalate your concern automatically to get your problem solved faster.
For asus i can't really say enough, they have a customer loyalty team that does a remarkable job getting back to you and making sure you're updated constantly. Mason asus customer loyalty personally helped me get my rog laptop repaired after a failed bios update.

Yeah i've owned that many machines, at least 20 machines this year, 30-50 last year. I'll usually buy them and refurbish them to sell them in my store (i do more repairs than sales). Some i'll use for a few weeks just to make sure the temps stay in spec. Some are gpu reflows, others are dc jack, charging circuit and other motherboard repairs.

Again i think i deserve to complain about the hp sticker problem. It's just a sticker, it's needed if you service anything in the display and it's not available for a decent price or even by itself. It's like finding a needle in a haystack and they need to fix that. Other customer service procedures issue you a case number, hp doesn't seem to care if you have to tell your story to a million different people if you get disconnected or transferred.

 

The same problem exists for every other manufacturer with Intel drivers. I guess you're mad at Dell, Sony, Lenovo, etc. too.

 

Same problem on Samsung laptops with Sandy Bridge and Windows 8 reported to Intel in July:

Brightness settings are ignored.

If you Google around, you can find reports like this all over. It's not HP's fault, but by all means please feel free to come on to the HP forums and b!tch about it.

 

I have complained about it on the HP forums.

That said, your example is ridiculous, because it is HP's fault in our case. Intel's reference driver is not specifically for laptops, and that is really all there is to it. While it may work, some features may not because it is not tailored to any one device. It is a reference driver. It is up to HP (or any other manufacturer) to customize the inf for their device. This is nothing new. The inf needs to be modified for the devices. I'd say Intel can't fix this because the inf needs to be modified for each device that has different features. For instance, the Intel driver controls the backlight on the keyboard of the HP Envy. However, not all laptops use a backlight for the keyboard. Laptops need brightness control, desktops do not. Reference drivers do not address these issues.

HP has brightness working on some of their laptops. So obviously its not a matter of it broken for everyone.

That said, I fixed brightness control on my laptop. My fix has only worked for some, but the reality is that it IS FIXABLE by HP because what I modified was inf related.

I am happy that you have found a way to justify incompetence, but I on the other hand have not.

If this is happening to other manufacturers as well, I hope those people are complaining too.

 

My $0.02 worth:

I recently started volunteering at a local computer repair and donation shop, where we refurbish both desktops and laptops. As a result, I've worked on many laptops from many different mfgrs; however, since my own personal machine is an HP Compaq business machine, I try to focus on those, since I know how they are generally assembled.

The two most common brands we see are HPs and Dells, though we tend to get just about every brand imaginable at our shop. Among the consumer line (Dell Inspiron and HP Pavilion), I've seen just a few more faulty HPs than I have faulty Dells, and the HPs are usually a bit newer, too! That maybe because I tend to prefer to work on the HPs though, so my view might be skewed there. And they're both more reliable than the newer Gateways and Acers that have come through our shop. I have yet to see a useable Gateway laptop come in.

As for Dell Latitude vs. HP Compaq (we rarely get ProBooks and Elitebooks).... it depends. The older Latitudes were really just re-skinned Inspirons, so they weren't all that great. The HP Compaqs at the time were much more solid than any Dell or HP Pavilion. But starting with the Dx20 series and the D410, Dell Latitudes made a MAJOR leap forward in quality, surpassing HP Compaq IMO. Of course, the IBM/Lenovo Thinkpads are even better, but the Dx20 and Dx30 latitudes are *very* close.

As for my own personal laptop, an HP Compaq nw8440 (see sig), it's been a fantastic machine, considering it's been used almost every day for the past 6 years. Yes, I've had many parts replaced on it, but they were usually my own fault. The exceptions were the CD drive, the LCD (randomly wouldn't turn on + flickering backlight), several power adapters (the HP power adapters really do suck), the back right corner of the laptop which has cracked (the serial port is there, and the casing is very thin/weak there since the CD drive is just in front of that port) and most recently, the headphone jack. But considering how much it's been used, it's held up EXTREMELY well (the headphone jack failure is also after almost 6 years of near daily use).

The same cannot be said for the HP Pavilion dv1000. Yes, it's an older model, but there were 3 of them that I discovered in my shop, all dead. One of them worked until I decided to swap motherboards with another dv1000 that had a much cleaner and nicer case. Man, I *hate* the dv1000.

HP pavilions were/are known for poor cooling systems. On the AMD-powered dv2000z/dv6000z/dv9000z and the Compaq Presario V3000z/V6000z models, the fan algorithm was so poorly programmed that the internal components could overheat and fry the wireless card. HP later released an updated BIOS which fixed the issue. There's a gorgeous copper-colored dv7 in our shop that does nothing but flash the num/caps lock 4 times, which indicates a bad GFX controller, possibly due to overheating. Even my HP Compaq nw8440's fan is very loud, with CPU idle temps in the low 50C range, easily shooting to 70-80C under load. And if you don't keep the vents clean, the CPU temps will just keep climbing from there.

Conclusions:
1. Sick with business-class laptops.
2. STICK WITH BUSINESS-CLASS LAPTOPS!
3. If you absolutely must go with a consumer-grade laptop, STAY AWAY from Gateway and Acer.
3a. If you plan on getting a powerful dedicated GPU, STAY AWAY from HP.
3b. If you do NOT plan on getting a powerful dedicated GPU, it's a toss-up between HP and Dell (and possibly Lenovo?).

 

Just had another HP machine croak on me, my wife's 2010 HP Pavillion DV6.... the webcam only works intermittently and the BIOS randomly reports a hardware fault. Machine only lasted about 2.5 years. HDD was replaced 3 months after she got it...

Never again will I buy HP........even though I really like their DM1Z....

 

No, they don't, where in the world do you guys come up with this BS? Might want to clean the dust off of the components to reduce temps. Dust traps heat..... I guess my 4+ year vostro 1400 and my 4+ year old Studio 17, and my 3 year old Studio 15 should all be melted by now according to your logic...

I guess all of my 5-10 year old electronic devices that have power transistors should be melted as well since I have never opened them up and reapplied thermal paste to any of it. Same goes for my 4+ year old C2D rig that is seriously overclocked with a 4870.. or an even older C2D machine with a 3870....

 

Story time!
The semester I started med school Best Buy had a really great deal on the HP Pavillion DV6. Almost half the class ended up getting one. The other half, predictably, used Macbook Pros.

Exactly one year later, after the warranties began to expire, everyone's HPs started dying off one by one. This happened over the course of 6 weeks.
I remember this period very clearly. Students were panicking due to lost work and valuable notes, many of them in tears. HP customer support was awful. I don't think anyone who didn't get an extended warranty got their's fixed.

Almost everyone ended up switching to Macbooks. My Dell was still chugging along nicely though.....

 

Looks like college kids don't take good care of their DV6s!!!

 

Same thing with he dv7's the gpu dies out or a vrm dies and will no longer charge the laptop. I've seen countless hp laptops with gpu issues. They need to work on their thermal design and stop worrying about looks. The beats series are just an overpriced model with a name on it. You definitely don't get what you pay for.

 

I believe that what Teraforce said about HP's business class laptops is true. However, HP's non-business laptops either had horrible audio (which is funny considering their quality audio is their biggest marketing gimmick) or one of those unusable unresponsive buttonless "clickpads".