HP | Customer Disservice

It seemed simple enough.

I plugged my HP laptop into the AC power in my office.  The transformer in the power cord starts beeping, something it hasn't done before, and the laptop stays on battery power.

I unplug the power cord, the beeping stops.  I plug it back into the wall socket and the beeping resumes.  And the laptop remains on battery power.

I have a bad power cord.  It's still under warranty.  So, after a bit of searching on their Web site (they hide the phone number because they really don't want us to call) I reach an HP support tech.

The HP tech apparently doesn't have a page in his tech-support scripts for a bad power cord.  After an hour, we're still on the phone.  The HP "help" guy still doesn't understand the problem.  "I have a bad transformer in my power cord and I need a new one" doesn't seem to be clear enough.

Finally, I give up and and tell the HP tech guy on the phone I'm going to take my laptop back to the store where I bought it.  Then I hang up.  He calls me back.  "Our connection was broken," he says.  "No, I told you I was hanging up to take my laptop back to the store."  I tell him good-bye and hang up.  He calls back again trying to resume our hour-long conversation.  I tell him again I'm done talking to him.  I'm on my way to the store.

I take the machine to the retail store where I bought it.  They want to check the entire computer in.  "It will be three days before a tech can look at it," the nice lady at the reception counter tells me.

"You don't need to have a technician check the laptop," I tell her for the second time.  "The laptop works fine.  I have a bad power cord."  She agrees to have someone test the power cord.  Ten minutes later she tells me I have a bad power cord.  I wish I had thought of that.

She tells me they can take my bad one, send it to HP and they'll send a new one to the store -- several miles from my home and office.  They'll let me know when it comes in, she says.  Probably a week to 10 days.  They'll call me when it comes in so I can drive to their store to pick it up.  They have this very same power cord in stock.  But I can't have one of those, the nice lady tells me.

I get back to my car.  There's a message from the HP support guy.  I have a bad power cord he suggests.  It's under warranty so I can take it back to the store where I bought it if I want.  How helpful.  I wonder how he figured that one out.  And when.

Whatever happened to customer service?

That's my two cents' worth.  What's yours?

Comments

[refurbished computers]

i think you should call Hp for recalling the battery cord plus battery, might be there is something wrong with your battery and wire.