my problem was a dead hard drive.
I phoned in for customer service only to find out they had no record of my extended warranty.
I tried to be understanding and made every effort to get the information to them as soon as possible... they were not as understanding and it took me a week to finally get it to them, this included several phone calls I had to make where I waited for over 45 minutes each time just to talk to a representative.
Once they had my warranty information it took another few days to process it.
By the end of the second week of me being without my laptop which I use daily, I was able to make the request for a new hard drive. However they wanted a credit card for collateral... so since i bought the HP laptop with HP extended warranty directly from HP using an HP issued credit card, I gave them that credit card number.... but they would only accept Visa, Amex and Master Card and not the HP one.
So I told them because I already wasted two weeks dealing with them and since there is no reason they shouldn't accept the credit card they issued themselves, I should get the hard drive without all these requirements. Requested to talk to a manager, who finally called me back several days later, asking exactly the same questions they have asked me over the past several weeks.
Once I receieved the hard drive they had overnighted to me... it was defective. It looked beat up on the outside and sounded beat up once installed. It was shaking the whole laptop, vibrating and making crackling noises when the laptop was running.
I phoned them back to get another one, this time they wouldn't honor the fact that I was waiting for such a long time and had an HP credit card to give them instead of what they wanted... and left me high and dry.
Many phone calls later trying to bargain with the customer service representatives, quality managers and total care representatives I got nowhere. So I wrote a letter to corpoate and usa headquarters and immediately got a call from a US based representative.
Besides speaking perfect english that was easy to understand she also offered me a brand new laptop for all my troubles... Great! I thought. Only to get a phone call from her later saying she can't send it out if I don't send the old one back. Bummer!
So basically I would like to get compensated for all the time wasted. I am no longer interested in them fixing the laptop, I took that task upon myself which proved my extended warranty useless. But getting that laptop she promised me would have been nice.
--Russ