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Warranty No Help as Woman Waits and Waits for Laptop Repair


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Cary Woman Waits and Waits, but Warranty Doesn't Work for Her
Cary Woman Waits and Waits, but Warranty Doesn't Work for Her

Many of us couldn't function without our computers, but a recent Consumer Reports survey showed that even the best brand still had 15 percent of its laptop computers needing repairs.

That makes the warranty and customer service really important, but Anjana Kennedy, of Cary, had trouble with both.

As a real estate agent, Kennedy depends on her laptop. When it remained broken for three months, she had a big problem.

Kennedy paid $1,298 for her machine less than a year ago and added $200 for an extended warranty. When the computer suddenly stopped working in May, she called Hewlett-Packard.

The company determined the hard drive had crashed and agreed to send her a new one. Kennedy said she was told it would take three days.

“Three days came and went, so I gave them another three days. Six days came and went. Nothing. I called them back and they said, ‘Oh no, it's on the way’” Kennedy said.

Kennedy said she kept calling. At one point, she said H-P told her the hard drive was out of stock.

“It went from one month to the next and to the next, and this is three months later practically, and I still don't have my hard drive. My case has been escalated seven or eight times” Kennedy said.

Kennedy continually used the FedEx tracking number H-P gave her to check for progress.

“I came to find out that my hard drive had actually been shipped to somebody in California” she said.

After more calls, Kennedy says a case manager agreed to send her a new computer within 14 days. That didn't happen either. Finally, she called 5 on Your Side.

“It's a major headache for me to have to deal with this on a daily basis now” said a frustrated Kennedy.

5 on Your Side called H-P. The company immediately sent Kennedy a new laptop and, for her trouble, a red leather carrying case!

“Now I have my laptop back. I'm very happy,” Kennedy said.

H-P apologized saying, "Mistakes like this can happen" but adding that Kennedy's experience was the "exception and not the rule."

RELATED TOPICS: Cary

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As laptops go, Dells and Thinkpads are pretty tough. We've got a couple of each that get banged around traveling and on jobsites, they just keep kicking along.

The amount of gumbo junk that's preinstalled on some systems is enough to effectively cripple performance. All that unnecessary crud running in the background comes with a price. msconfig is your friend.

BB consistently has the worst customer service record among electronics retailers. For most items the store accepts no responsibility at all, will not accept returns and offers no refunds. I have to believe the good experience mentioned was part of a special agreement with HP.

I understand the "I feed and clothe my tech guy." He built my Gator blue PC for me and I love it. Unfortunately for me he graduated college and, oh my, moved to Raleigh. I still call him for input. At least I can still get him on the phone.

Best Buy and Intrex suck. Had a computer at BB, they kept it for 2 weeks and didn't touch it. Took it to Intrex, they had it for 1 1/2 weeks and couldn't fix it. Took it to another shop and had it back the next day fixed and at a very good price.

"Then you don't have to worry about not having the disks, or having to pay the manufacturer for them, or worse having the manufacturer tell you they don't have the install disks anymore because your particular model is out of their coverage timeframe."

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If you've paid for the machine (which would include the Microsoft tax), then you ought to get a set of real CDs with the box rather than relying on a system partition which can get corrupted in a variety of ways (not all of them due to user error).

You shouldn't have to burn them yourself...you should get the CDs to reinstall the operating system period. You've paid for it and it's not like it costs them much more to toss them into the package.

But if they're going to rely on such a fragile distribution method, then charging the customer again for media for software that they've already paid and licenced is fraud.

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