To close, I thought I would inform everyone of my recent dealing with HP Technical Support, which is a reason that I will no longer purchase a pre-built computer.
In October of 2003, my manufacturer’s 1 year warranty (the base warranty) on my Compaq Presario 700 laptop was set to expire. I phoned HP Customer care and asked if an extension warranty was available for purchase. The support agent said that there were two options available: purchasing a one year extension for $70 or purchasing a two year extension for $99. I thought about that for a while and decided that I might as well cover the thing for the full two years. It was purchased on October 7, 2003.
In October of 2004, I contacted them about a hardware problem on the laptop, and was informed that I did not have a warranty on it. Confused, I told them that I had purchased a 2 year extension a year earlier. The support agent said that there was no record of the extension in their database, and gave me a number to fax a proof of purchase to. Funny thing is: I never received any type of proof of purchase.
I knew that it had been charged, because I would have contacted them immediately if it was not. So I started to dig for the bank statement that it was charged on. Sure enough, I found it right where it should have been – charged on October 7, 2003. I faxed this, along with a nice little explanation that I never received proof of purchase, and that the statement was all I had.
After waiting a few days, I receive an e-mail from them telling me that they do not except credit card statements as valid proof of purchase and to contact the place I purchased the warranty for a valid proof of purchase. At this point, I was extremely unhappy – not only did I have to do work that I shouldn’t have to do, but I still had a laptop with a broken network card, floppy drive, and recently “expired” DVD-ROM drive. I faxed them back, and told them (again) that I purchased the warranty from them and I was requesting an official proof of purchase.
After waiting a week, I had heard nothing back from them, so I tried one last time to get them to acknowledge me. I threatened with a lawyer this time, to see if that would get them to do something about it, but still, nothing happened. This time, I decided to take a look around on their website to see if I could find the number to HP’s legal department. What I found was a lot better. After digging through their investor relations page, looking for a link, I found a link to an “E-Mail the HP Board of Directors” page (the link is quite hidden, so if anyone ever needs it, here you go: http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/execteam/email/bod/index.html). I sent them a letter informing them of the problem, and told them that if they ignored me like their support department did, I would take legal action. Within a business day, I had a “highest priority” response from their executive customer relations team. I was given a number to call during business hours, and told that they would help solve the problem.
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