Update on my HP dv5030us NIGHTMARE

I'm so mad right now my face is probably red and steam is coming from my ears.

Heres the story from the begining:

I purchased an HP dv5030us on March 12th of last year. I got it on sale from Fry's like a few other people here and at other forums have.

I had USB problems from the start, like many of those people.

On March 1st of this year, my system totally crashes. It fried the USB devices that were connected at the time. From that point on, no USB devices work. They all show up as malfunctioning devices. PCMCIA and ExpressCard devices, like the HP ExpressCard Analog TV Tuner, all show up as malfunctioning USB devices.

I reinstall Windows XP using the DVD it came with 6 times and Windows Vista once. Every time the results are exactly the same.

So I go to Fry's. I have the extended warranty there. Even though it is still under HP warranty, I go there because, at that time, I needed the loaner offered under Fry's warranty. So I take it there, clearly demonstrate the problem. The "technician" runs a diagnostic check and sees the problem there as well. Off to HP it goes. I come home with an HP loaner and everything seems fine. I get home and the HP loaner is also defective. Bad DVD drive. I take it back and say forget the loaner. Head over to Apple and get a MacBook. Best computer I've ever owned.

Four weeks go by. I try calling Fry's to find out whats going on because they say HP repairs usually only take four weeks instead of the usual 8 weeks. Can't get through to the store's status repair/tech support number. I call HP and find out that the laptop was "fixed" and returned to Fry's two weeks prior. So I attempt to call Fry's again and they tell me it is ready for pickup.

I take same equipment with me to the store to test. Fry's "technician" tries to get me to sign the paperwork right away. But I'm too smart for that and insist to test it right there. Low and behold, it wasn't fixed. Good job HP!

What's worse is that the technician tries to tell me the error messages are normal! I hook up my iPod and it does the same exact thing as before. Whats that? Well, when you connect an iPod, regardless of whether iTunes is installed or not, the iPod automatically switches on and says "Do Not Disconnect" and Windows (or Linux, or OS X), will treat it like an external HDD.

The iPod displays nothing except "Okay to Disconnect" (It was in Disk Mode), and Windows says "malfunctioning USB device". The tech tries to blame the fact that iTunes is not installed. I tell him that doesn't matter because it is in Disk Mode and he can look it up online if he wants to. Then he tries to blame the fact that the iPod was manufactured before the computer! At this point I am literally laughing out loud and tell him that doesn't matter either because I had used it with the system the entire year before it decided to malfunction, AND I had moved hundreds of MB of data to the drive the night before and it worked flawlessly.

Other devices are a no go.

He hooks up a USB external HDD. Windows gives the same error messages upon installation. It also says "this device would perform better connected to a USB 2.0 port". He has the nerve to tell me thats normal and THEN asks if they are USB 2.0 ports! I laugh in astonishment and tell him to get on HP's website and look at the specs for the system. amazingly, he does. He then updates the drivers. Then he tries to argue with me, again, when it doesn't work. Then I see the paperwork HP sent back with the system. Something he should have looked at to begin with.

The paperwork says "We have identified a problem with your CD/DVD/RW drive and have replaced it". Thats it. They did nothing else.

So he finally realizes the machine was not fixed, looks at the notes provided by the previous technician at Fry's and fills out all the paperwork to send it back. Everything goes smoothly from that point, I leave with the new paperwork.

Fast forward to today. I receive a registered letter from Fry's telling me that my system is ready for pickup. That I better pick it up within 30 day or the system will be disposed of! Obviously they have no internal communication. The letter clearly states that they tried to call me and send me mail via USPS to tell me my computer was ready for shipment. Now, having answering services and caller ID on BOTH my landline and cellphone, I can prove 100% without any kind of doubt that I have NEVER received a phone call from Fry's. Not once. I also never received anything in the mail. I call three times today and each time I get the same response "its ready for you to pick up". So what happens? I tell them to read the notes attached to the work order. THey do and reply "oh I need to talk to my supervisor about this. He'll call you back in the morning".

So I call HP and ask if I can deal with them. Despite the fact that California law CLEARLY states that the warranty is automatically extended if the product is defective under warranty, and repairs were attempted by the manufacturer UNDER warranty, but the issue was not resolved, they are trying to tell me that I will have to pay if I try to deal with them directly and not through Fry's now.

What wonderful time I've had. I've always built the PCs I've owned, except for an eMachines I had, my HP notebook, and now my MacBook. The ONLY computer I have ever had a problem with is the HP system.

So buyers beware to all who are potential HP customers. To those who have recently purchased HP systems, return them for a full refund. to those who can't, PRAY and HOPE that your system doesn't fail until you expect it to after years of use.

 

I feel your pain, that soooooo sucks.

I bought a notebook from Fry's in CA, too. A zd8000. What a freakin oven! I thought it was going to burn the house down. failure after failure after failure. I started putting small red felt-tip marks on the bad parts to see if HP would really swap with working parts but the parts would come back with the same small red-felt tip marks and not working. I printed diagnostic information and examples of the errors with snapshots, placed them on the keyboard and closed the notebook to give the technician a clue. I would send it in for cdrom won't burn a bootable disk and won't boot from one any longer. It comes back with an imaged harddrive that was fine in the 1st place. A replaced motherboard and they don't test that the keys correspond to the letters / numbers they are supposed to. It's crazy land. I bought a dv9000 wanting to play dvd's using quickplay direct where you don't have to boot into the operating system, so it saves your battery. Wow, I could watch a whole dvd on battery, finally. I get the notebook and they don't install that feature anymore cuz it don't work. Well, it shows it on the box !!! That was one of the reasons I bought the dang thing. They don't even let you download it from their website. I had to pirate a copy and try to hack it together as some people have and I'm still not there, yet.

I feel sorry for you, but at least you have friends here listening.

 

SaruonMOS: Welcome to the club. Have a read of my sig on customer care.

HP Customer care f*** *ps club

1. Tell all how you're not happy!
2. Send an email to Mark Hurd that you're not happy! ([email protected])

 

Well, heres another update:

The "supervisor" for the tech department at Fry's called me today. Some guy who couldn't even speak English properly.

I don't remember his name because his call made me so mad that I had to relax afterwards.

He tried telling me multiple times that my system was ready for pickup. I actually had to point out the paragraph, and read it to him, on the SRO sheet that specifically pointed out that the machine was not serviced properly and needed to be sent back to HP.

But before all of that, he tried to tell me they had "records" of phone call attempts to call me and tell me my system was ready for pickup! When I mentioned I had caller ID, an answering machine, and that Fry's phone number shows up on caller ID and that if I had received a call I would have a record of it, he shut up real quick.

So now he supposedly needs to speak to his manager about the situation.

I'll be calling Monday and making them aware that I'm am more than willing to go to the BBB on this and seek legal advice if I have to.

Everything would have gone fine, even after HP's screw up, if it hadn't been for the fact that they obviously screwed up so bad and didn't even read their own paperwork and sent me the letter trying to get me to come pickup my PC.

Hah, thanks. I feel your pain too. It amazes me that a company as large as HP that pulls in so much revenue every year can't even afford to hire people who at least look at the paperwork associated with the repair.

It's funny that you mention Quickplay too. Quickplay never worked right on my system. DVD playback on batteries always stuttered. It was never smooth and the battery always died at about 1:45! In Windows with DVDs I could pull off about 2:30 or so.

That makes me think of another thing I should be worried about. My battery was charged fully and at 97% capacity when I took the system in. I brought the battery home with me. I wonder how much capacity it will have lost as a result of sitting for what will probably be 2 or more months.

I'll definitely be emailing him!

I just read your experience and I feel your pain too. HP has the worst customer support in the industry. It's amazing just how bad it is. How can a company treat their customers so poorly? But thanks for the email address. I'll definitely be taking advantage of that before my head hits the pillow tonight.

This is my first HP computer ever. Needless to say I will never purchase another HP system. I don't care if HP is the last PC manufacturer on the plane and I need one to survive. I still won't buy it.

 

Don't forget to make you're email client asks for receipt and read notifications.

When I sent an email, I never got reply from the US side of things, just a receipt that someone with a woman's name had opened the email. But less that 24 hours later things started getting sorted out.

But my email was entitled "FAO Mark Hurd: Notice Of Impending Legal Action"

HP aren't the only ones that are treating people like this. Dell are just as bad.

http://www.engadget.com/2006/12/10/disgruntled-dell-customer-finds-crafty-path-to-lawsuit-settlemen/ <--- I wish I could have done something like that to HP!

The problem is that people don't know their rights, or are to scared/lazy to take action. Others fob it off as "who cares?", most customers don't have a problem. The problem is that when a customer does a problem it should be sorted out correctly, not by some git who couldn't careless!

I'm amazed that HP even has an ISO-9001, but I think it's because they outsource damn near everything.

 

This is funny...

So the people at Fry's didn't submit the failure documentation paperwork properly to HP, and it is HPs fault?

The people at Fry's didn't contact you as they stated they did and it is HP's fault?

The Fry's technician tells you an error message is normal and it is HP's fault?

You elected to have repairs performed through an outside vendor and you expect HP to honor warranty work? Nobody will honor any warranty after someone else was into the system, albeit through an intermediary like Fry's. You opted to activate your Fry's warranty rather than going through HP's channels, so YOU made the choice. That is like having some shadetree put a motor in your BMW and asking BMW to honor their warranty.

You have some seriously misguided anger my friend. While there may have been a failure of your HP computer (hey, believe it or not, not everybody is as perfect as you are) the resulting warranty issues and store personnel are NOT HP issues, they are Fry's issues.

 

And you have a serious problem reading posts my friend.

I went to Fry's even though the system was still under HP warranty. I did it only for the "loaner" that is part of their service contract.

Considering that the system was still under HP's warranty, Fry's sent the system to HP to be repaired under HP's warranty.

HP did not repair the system. They, instead, "fixed" the DVD drive which had no issues. They sent it back to Fry's after "repairing" the drive.

This is where the mistakes Fry's has made come into play.

However, even though Fry's made the mistake with the paperwork and getting the system shipped back to HP, it is still partially HP's fault for not fixing the system originally and releasing a product that used the faulty/shoddy ATI chipset.

 

Haha I like your email's subject line. I might have to try that if things get to that point here

I'm hoping that it will not though. I should be receiving quite a few phone calls tomorrow. Or making them at the very least. I'm making and receiving every phone all on my cellphone, so that way I can easily print records to prove the call took place.

 

YOU have a serious problem understanding warranties my friend.

Fry's is an intermediary warranty provider. It is just like the BMW motor I mentioned earlier, just because the motor came from BMW doesn't mean they will honor the warranty if someone else does the work. Once you enacted Fry's warranty program, you sidestepped HP and accepted Fry's as your warranty provider.

Also, maybe they did fix the system. What is to say that Fry's listed all the failures on the work order? You mentioned how they screwed up all the other communication, why are you suddenly so sure they were perfect on their end sending it to HP? After all, the computer you got as a loaner did have a dead optical drive, right? And you returned it quite quickly upon finding this out, right? Maybe, just maybe, Fry's also screwed that up... it is not beyond the realm of possibilities considering how poorly they communicated with you.

As for the faulty/shoddy chipset... It wasn't just HP who used that chipset, and it isn't like they suffer a 100% failure rate. If they fix the rig, they did their part. It is just not financially feasible to throw away several thousand chipset units just because of a >10% failure rate.

Economics my friend, they all play a part in your scenario.

 

Seems to me this is an issue with Fry's. I would agree that it was HP's fault if you purchased the system through HP online. But this doesnt seem to be the case.

 

Perhaps you should ask to see a copy of the paperwork Fry's filed with HP.

 

*sigh*

Except that Fry's sent the system to HP to be repaired under HP warranty. Do you not understand that?

Fry's did NOT repair the system. They simply gave me the loaner as part of THEIR contract and sent it to HP under MY warranty with them.

Then explain to my why the motherboard still had all of the same issues as when it was shipped to HP?

Remember, HP performed the "repairs" here, NOT Fry's.

Fry's didn't even so much as TOUCH the system other than putting the diagnostic CD-ROM in and noting that the application determined that there were no USB ports on the motherboard.

Because I have a copy of the paperwork they sent to HP? It clearly states the problem. Both my description of the problem and the technician's description are included on the paperwork.

Fry's may have made a mistake in not contacting me and not shipping the system back out. But they did not screw up the paperwork, as I have a copy of it and people I spoke to at HP clearly indicated that this was a case of HP's technician not paying attention to what they should have.

Also, judging from my experience with Fry's, HP's customer support (past and present), and the thousands of posts here and at other forums made by disgruntled HP owners who have had nothing but problems with their HP systems and HP's customer support, I am more inclined to believe that HP made the mistake here.

Just go look at the dv8000/5000 keyboard thread here at this forum. That is a prime example of HP not caring at all about their customers and screwing them over when it comes to faulty hardware.

So it's Fry's fault that HP shipped a computer to them with a dead optical drive?

But it would be wise to fix the systems that do have problems and offer to replace those systems if customers complain. Theres no excuse for HP to ship, and continue to ship, a system built around a faulty chipset for so many months.

The chipset problem here is mainly HPs fault. The Xpress 200 chipset had the option of different South Bridge controllers. HP, to my knowledge, is the ONLY manufacturer that chose the faulty and incredibly slow SB400 series South Bridge controller. No other PC manufacturer used this that I know of. Only HP. And conveniently, only HP had these problems.

 

Well, I had to file a complaint with the BBB. HP continues to give me the run around now. They won't even allow me to do so much as leave a note on the file for the technicians to repair the motherboard or at least even look at it.

So now we'll see how things play out.