Stay Away From Hp!

I bought my HP Pavillion notebook about 6 months ago, never dropped my notebook, never dropped water/juice, etc. I went to use my notebook when I noticed that the hinge came undone. I sent my notebook to get fixed, and even though it was UNDER WARRANTY, HP said that I have to pay $300+ tax for damage, since it was "PHYSICAL DAMAGE". Meaning, their warranty only covers when your brand new laptop explodes or dies on you; if you happen to turn it on and something breaks like a piece of crappy plastic hinge, you have to pay for it. Needless to say I will never buy from HP again, even if they pay me!!! My notebook did not show any other PHYSICAL damage, meaning no dents, no scratches, nothing!!! I had to stay over 6 weeks without a laptop and for someone who works from home such as myself, this is unacceptable! Laptops were made to be used, they were not made to be a decoration since you might break the hinge off by lifting the screen up WITH BOTH HANDS!!

Good Laptops: Sony Vaio, Dell & Macs - Spend the extra money people!

 

How nice for you.

People who register for a web site just to post a 'complaint' don't get much sympathy.......

 

Yeah, but they're still allowed to post. It isn't like we do not have complaints like this strewn all across the board in various manufacturer subforums...

 

Lots of companies will bone you in this manner. Sorry to hear it bro.

 

Didn't ask for any help, just venting.

There are plenty of people here who have successfully dealt with 'reluctant' support and warranty claims.

 

Sorry but Sony and Mac's are not really good to upgrade and they got lots of hardware restrictions for the hefty price tag. Therefore, your recommendations are invalid to a degree. HP at least has room for me to tweak and upgrade things that aren't always all proprietary.

 

This claim falls unders the category of accidental damage for which a seperate care package would have needed to have been purchased.

I can sympathize with the circumstances, but come on... HP cannot decipher this between being a defect in the materials used to originally build or just how the notebook was handled once in your care. Really - given the retail cost on these units and how they come equipped, why the hell would anyone NOT take a few precautions in protecting their purchase with accidental damage protection? Maybe a few hundred $$$ sounds ridiculous at first in justifying those "what if" scenarios, but when it DOES really happen...

I would not even consider putting down the additional money for say a G-series Pavilion or any dual-core model. But mine, as it was configured, came to over $2000.00USD. So it would not have made sense for me not to make the investment. Besides if you were willing to put the cash down anyway - why in hell didn't you?

 

@ OP

i am /was a HP user the DV5T never faltered during all this time (except things we all knew that failed...the battery and the inverter) any how...spent 2 months with HP (sporadically) and eventually made 'em send me a brand new batteryx2..... so all in all not bad i reckon...but if you think DELL or Sony are any better..think again,..i am currently suffering with their AW brand....2 M17's later..... and i still don't have a laptop....if it weren't for my Dv5T (dutifully chugging along) i'd go crazy......

i think Sony are un-neccesarily expensive and Dell.....well they are another HP under a different garb..APPLE...well..it's apple.... you either love 'em or hate 'em can't do both

 

Look at this guy.

 

Well, I just registered so I could post this. Been googling tonight to try to find out what's wrong with my DV6. Anyhow, I'm completely done with HP. My laptop is just over a year old and first it was saying "hard drive not exist" and then wouldn't start at all. Got it to start again but still have the hard drive error.

On top of that, the "wireless n" card that came in the unit does not do true wireless n, and of course they whitelist the cards and lock down the bios so you can't upgrade the wireless mini-card.

If it was just the laptop it would be one thing, but I have an HP printer that needs ink everytime I start it. Either one is empty or one has "expired and cannot print safely". The HP customer service is worse than a late night trip to McDonald's in downtown Detroit. They are just not a good company IMO.

If anyone has recommendations for a decent mid-level laptop I'm listening. Thanks!

 

I guess what I should have said is the ~600 dollar range. I will def. be buying something other than HP.

 

MIght want to open a fresh thread for the buying recommendation.......

 

As i've learned the hard way, the best way to avoid this is to move up to business class notebooks, like the HP elitebook/probooks, the dell precisions, and the lenovo thinkpads - a lot of times the prices are even comparable with discount programs.

My first HP notebook went into repair 4 times for the nvidia defect, my next HP went in once for various little things, and i'd say about 4/10 people I know with HPs (and most other consumer notebooks for that matter) have had to reflow/send in the notebook for warranty service. Out of the business class notebook owners I know, not one has had to send in a notebook for service and my new Thinkpad's build quality is leagues ahead of my dv7.

On the other hand, if you're not going to use it heavily and there's no massive defect like the nvidia one from a few years ago, a consumer notebook may be perfectly fine for you.

 

I agree. I owned a Compaq Evo years ago. Never had an issue with it. My last couple of notebooks have been Pavilions due to cash restraints (spent $2500 on my dv6tqe-6000 versus the $5600 HP 8540w Elitebook I had originally had my sights on). I have had to treat my Pavilions with "kid gloves". Not totally convinced that my issues with the ATi Radeon 6770M card is entirely driver-related. Either the card is faulty somehow or AMD releases crap drivers, IMO.

 

Thanks for the feedback on getting an business-class notebook. Indrek, nothing personal, I just don't like HP's business practices.

 

@bigtime...dude HP's bios (after some time can get get the whitelisting revoked....there is a website that does this..i got the DV5T bios fixed in the same way and replaced the existing 5100AGN to the 6300AGN) ..... so it's possible

 

I love my HP laptop. I do understand though. I take extremely good care of my laptop. I've noticed with mine that I need to open it slowly because it does appear that if I'm quick with opening and closing it that something might break. I always take my time just in case as it would really suck having it break. Especially now that it's out of warranty!

Shannon