hp canada customer serivice experience

just as a heads up, i am going to flame hp's customer service in the proceeding paragraph.

i did not create this thread because i believe that hp's customer service is horrible, i am writing this because i have been a victim of at least 6 hp employees' incompetence, and i have no where else to release my aggrevation.

i purchased a compaq v2305ca in august 2005, and have been overall satsified with my purchase, not expecting too much from a sub $800CAD notebook. however, my dvd drive ceased reading all formats of cd-roms in mid november. with the limited knowledge i have about computers, i assumed that the optical pickup for the cd-rom died, but the dvd frequency was intact. i called in shortly after winter break began so that i would not suffer from the wait period of shipping the notebook to hp and back during the school term. several weeks later, i recieved the notebook back untouched. i called in to demand an answer and was told that the technician who handled my notebook was indeed at fault and they directed me to a department higher up to resolve the issue. this special division agreed to ship me a new dvd drive as long as i sent back the old one. 1 week later, i recieved a refurbished lg drive that had even more problems than the first one. naturally, i called in to complain about the issue. they agreed to send me a second drive. 1 week later i recieved a toshiba/samsung drive with inferior read write speeds, but was nonetheless operational. being exhausted from the ****ty reponses i have so far recieved from hp, i decided to be content and shipped the 2 fault drives back on the same day via ups. 3 weeks later, i received a bill from hp for not returning 1 of the two drives for $188. i called in once again to resolve the issue, the csr refered me to his manager who than assured me it was their mistake and that i would be reimbursed within 4-6 weeks. 7 weeks later, i had not been reimbursed and called in again. this csr apologized and again refered me to his manager, who than said it was once again, some kind of error resulting from a failed communcation between 2 departments. he guaranteed me i would receive my reimbursment within 4-6 weeks. 7 weeks later, once again, i did not receive my reimbursment. today i called in again, and was told by the csr and her manager that it was another departmental communication error and that they were terribly sorry for the consecutive mistakes and that i should call in 5 days from now to confirm that the proper procedure will in fact occur this time around.

this all occured over tha course of 7 months, that could have been easily resolved, had the first technician actually tested my notebook and swapped the faulty drive. that did not occur and as a result i had to go through this ****.

i will admit that all of the csr's i had delt with were friendly, but many were not the most knowledgeable people i have delt with. furthermore, the incompetence of the many csr's and their managers i delt with, be it their abilities or their ineffective system's abilities, have lost my faith in their company and i vow never again to buy one of their products of of spite.

thank you for your time.

 

thats horrid.....why does it take 4-6 weeks to get a reimbursment?....i guess ill stick with dell and not hp...sounds bad as it is..

 

that's something i asked them on several occasions but they never gave me a straight answer. simply stating that the process does in fact take 4-6 weeks.
many people have had good experiences with hp, and i am aware that there will always be some problems with customer service regardless of company, but the extent to which i experienced hp's apparent incompetance, has forced me to create this thread and vow never again to purchase one of their products.