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Hi, All--
I'm new here, and found this forum as a result of my struggles with my new laptop. Here is the sequence of events in dealing with HP "Support"
1.) On Thursday, June 24th 2010, Fry's had an HP G62-147NR laptop on sale for $599.99, and since it had an i5 processor, it was about the best deal I found.
Since Fry's has a new weekly special ad that comes out every Friday, I decided to wait until then to open it, in the event that a better deal was advertised. There wasn't a better deal, so I went ahead and opened it that day.
I spent nearly ALL DAY trying to configure the laptop unsuccessfully. I finally figured out that there was a problem with the Video card or something--I would only intermittently get something displayed on the screen, so I took it back on Saturday (June 26th), got a replacement, and IT WORKED, so I took it home and started configuring it.
2.) I downgraded to XP, but not before completing the setup for Windows 7, so I could go through the creation of the recovery disks. The first disk was created fine, but after three attempts to create the second disk, and having it fail each time near the end of the "Validation" process, I gave up.
I had created an image of my existing laptop, fully configured with XP Pro with all the updates and software installed, so I stuck the HDD into another machine, and used an imaging program to place the image onto the new drive. After some configuration changes in the registry and dropping the appropriate file for the controller in the correct location, I installed the HDD back into the laptop and it booted up. I had previously downloaded all the XP drivers for the new machine onto the old laptop, so I installed all of them and everything worked fine.
HOWEVER--it did not have Bluetooth. PLEASE NOTE: There is NO documentation anywhere stating that this laptop came with Bluetooth, so I started searching for whatever module was required to add it to the machine.
What I found on the HP Parts website is that, for this specific model, there is an Atherose 802.11 a/b/g/n miniPCI-e card that has Bluetooth integrated into it, and it is the ONLY wireless card available for this particular product.
3.) On TUESDAY, June 29th, I created an account on the HP Forums website, and posed a question, asking to verify if this indeed is true, that this is truly the only wireless card installed in this machine, and if so, what I needed to do to enable it. I got NO response whatsoever (even through today).
4.) Yesterday, July 1st, I called HP Parts to try and find an answer to this question.
The HP Rep was so bad, even after repeating the question THREE TIMES, they still did not understand it, (her response was, "So, you are telling me that you cannot connect to the Internet?") so I asked to be transferred to someone who could speak English.
She then transferred me back into the SAME QUEUE, where I got ANOTHER person who barely spoke English, and after posing the question to them TWO times, I demanded to speak to someone whose native tongue was English. I did get transferred to someone in the US, who told me they could not guarantee that I would get someone from the US.
5.) So, after that call, I called HP Tech Support, and this time posed my question to the person, HOPING that they would be able to understand me; yet again, the question was not understood. After repeatedly demanding to speak to someone whose native tongue was English, and after the rep refused, while begging me to give him a chance, I blew up and hung up the phone.
I called back, and after discussing the issue with the customer service representative, I was transferred to the Canadian site, where I spoke to yet another person who was from either India or the Middle East.
The ONLY WAY I could make him understand my question was to walk him through going to the product page on the HP site, have him click the "Order Parts" link and then enter my serial number to bring up the list of parts available for my machine. THEN he was able to understand what I was asking.
6.) The tech support agent in Canada assigned my ticket to a "Case Manager" who called me back, and after a few minutes of clarifying the details of the case, he puts a "Tech Support" representative on the phone who didn't understand that if a hardware device doesn't appear in Device Manager, no amount of drivers in the WORLD are going to allow it to work!
The "Case Manager" tells me that I can send my BRAND NEW laptop in to have them work on it to "make it work", to which I responded that there was no way I was going to send my new machine to them and be without it for 3-4 weeks and then have them tell me, "It doesn't come with Bluetooth", so I told him he could send me the card, and I would install it myself.
7.) HOWEVER--my question *STILL* was not answered!! I still have no idea whether when they built my laptop, they put in some other Atheros card that DOESN'T have the bluetooth module installed on it, or if there is some BIOS setting to enable the radio that is "hidden", so as to not allow it to be enabled.
I asked the "Case Manager" if I could speak to someone who actually has some depth of knowledge of how Windows works with hardware, (and has deep knowledge of this specific model of machine) and he kept telling me that he had already engaged a "Tech Support" engineer who said that the reason it didn't work is because I downgraded to XP, EVEN AFTER I told the idiot that the issue occurs REGARDLESS of what version of Windows is installed!!!
After that, I finally just gave up and hung up on the guy, and decided to see if I could find some way to modify the BIOS so that I could check for a setting to enable the bluetooth radio . . . which led me to this site.
8.) One other thing: During the telephone call with the rep in Canada, he told me that I had 70 days left on my warranty!! How can there only be 70 days left on a brand new laptop?!?!? In the BIOS, the "In Warranty Date" even shows to be 4-23-10, which is, I'm assuming, the date the Laptop was built, so how is it that HP could screw THAT up?!?!?
At least I have information on where to send my receipt so that they can get THAT part fixed, but still, it shouldn't have happened in the first place! Seems to me that HP is doing something shady, because I found the same thing had happened on the FIRST laptop when I called HP Tech support about the problems I was having with it.
IN ANY EVENT--I wanted to first post about what a terrible support experience I've had with HP over the last week or so, AND to see if I perhaps could figure out how to modify my BIOS to "un-hide" any settings that will allow me to enable the bluetooth radio.
Sorry for the rant, and thanks for reading . . .
Terrible HP Support experience (Apologies in advance -Long)
Discussion in 'HP' started by stonecoldtx, Jul 2, 2010.
