HP Support for Pavillion / Vista products

Hi ... my name is Zokey Evago, and we may have something in common ! .. Did you purchase an HP laptop or computer in 2006-2007 and called HP warranty support? .. Did you find the "Total Care" staff in India to be very polite, time-consuming, and utterly useless? .. Did the staff in India instruct you to re-install all the software? .. Did you make more than 4 calls to HP for troubleshooting? .. were you told a “case manager” will call, but no one did? .. were you told to call 877-917-4380 ext. 94 or 79 or 87 to speak with a “case manager” but got re-routed back to India or to a dead-end voice-mail? .. was a promise-date to get a replacement part or product missed by more than 5 days? .. Did you answer “yes” to most of the questions above? .. if yes, please answer two more...

1). Do you have a record of your case number?
2). Did you spend more than 10 hours total (including calls-on-hold, reboots, re-installs, system recovery, re-program preferences, etc..) in the process of troubleshooting?

IF you answered yes to both (!) the above questions, you are not alone ! ..

The words “Total Care”, “Warranty”, “Customer Service”, “Technical Support” are meaningful and important to us. These powerful words create a image of integrity, create customer-expectations, influence purchase decisions, and carry a real responsibility. .. Do you feel that HP is genuine about the use of these words?

Please help us get the attention of HP's senior management in a constructive way. Become part of the solution. An open letter to the board of directors? A full-page ad? Another class-action suite by attorneys from Girard Gibbs & De Bartolomeo LLP? or by Green & Jigarjian? or by Cutter, Ratinoff & York?

Write about your experience. One or two lines is OK ... more is welcome. To protect your privacy, do NOT include your name, and do NOT include your case number at this time. Email only please to : [email protected]

Thanks for your time, respectfully,

Zokey Evago
Palo Alto, CA

 

I guess everyones experience is different. I have owned HP's for years, starting with an old Pentium II through several others and currently have 2 A1140N's. I've called support many times on different issues and had no problems, other than occassional language problems.

They were of great help to me getting Vista Home P to run on both of my A1140N's so I can't say anything bad about them.

Steve

 

Your cause is noble -- but do you really think that HP senior management cares about anything other than their fat bonuses? This is the same company that went through major shakeups with their merger with Compaq!



I've had radically different experiences myself with HP support. I had an MCE machine fail, while still under warranty. I sent it back to them, they restored it, and it's been working fine ever since. In contrast, I've had two laptops, neither of which was "certified" for upgrading to the new MS OS (in one case, XP, in the other case, Vista), and in both cases, HP was of no help whatsoever. I've had several hardware repairs, some done locally, and the experience was polarized there as well.



Have owned a bunch of different machines since the early days of PCs, my own experience, is that, in the balance, HP is no worse or better than the other major OEMs.



The only real "vote" you have that will convince the senior management of any OEM, is to stop buying their products. If enough people do that, their sales will drop, as will their fat bonuses. Maybe then, they'll listen; but, don't hold your breath.l



For a similar story, I have a Fujitsu tablet PC running an Intel 915 chipset -- which Intel decided NOT to write Vista video drivers for, because, according to them, the 915 chipset can't support Aero. But, I'm also using WindowBlinds, which DOES provide the transparency that comes with Aero. (I guess the WB developers didn't know that the 915 chipset can't do transparency <G>). There is an online petition that many 915 users have joined -- to demand that Intel write 915 Aero drivers. But to date, nothing at all has been done.



Which is my roundabout way of saying -- don't hold your breath. But, good luck, anyway.

 

Agreed a noble and futile cause. Build your own it usually less time to buildthan shopping for a commercial machine is cheaper,the price vs performance isunspeakablysuperiorand requires little more knowledge than say Legos. Granted issues can arise with custom machines as well but they are no less frustrating than issues with any rig from HP,Dell,Gateway and so on, maybe less so as the user has ultimate control over the components and can not fault anyone but themselves.

The last machine i purchased fully assembled from a "reputable" company was an HP a1410n Media Center PC with a AMD 64 3800+ it was a piece of crap and the support was attrocious. The afore mentionedPC is what turned me to building my own and i have never looked back.

 

My experience with oem's have been good, though I still switched to building my own computer when I realised the cost benefit and how easy it is to do.

Ive owned 2 oem pc's made by Packard Bell which have been brilliant! The first one lasted be 5 years before I decided to get a new one, and the second I still use - now 6 years old and runs XP flawlessly. Not one problem with them ever.