HP repairs their reputation...

Before I get to the rest of my trip I have to tell you about my computer saga.

I bought a new HP Pavilion lap top when my trusty old Dell was showing signs of giving up the ghost.  I did a lot of research and wavered between HP and Dell but the Pavilion ultimately won out because it had absolutely everything I wanted.  I don’t do a lot of video or play games, so I didn’t need the fastest processor or a gazillion MB of memory.  The Pavilion has a backlit keyboard that I find handy if I want to do some writing at night.  It has an Intel core i5 and Windows 7 so it covers the basics.

I bought an extended warranty (thank God) and had been using the computer for well over a year when I began seeing a problem with the screen.  It would occasionally dim and the images became blurry.  This began to become more and more frequent so I called HP to find out what to do.  Like any good-sized organization, they want to see problems resolved at the lowest level possible and the tech lady did her best to probe me for information that might give some clue as to what the problem was and, hopefully, a fix that she could talk me through over the phone.

That turned out to be a waste of time and she even managed to delete some files that I really couldn’t afford to lose, but at least I was able to reconstruct them.  (Note to self -- get a good cloud-based back-up system!)  So I had to send it in for repairs.  HP sent me a special box to ship it in and it included the label to get it to the repair location overnight.  Although I was not happy over the fact that I was without my computer, at least I had my little ASUS netbook as a backup and the whole process was handled very efficiently.  I received my laptop back on the appointed day, fired it up and the screen immediately dimmed and white streaks shot across the display from left to right.  So… over a week without my computer and it still wasn’t fixed.

The next day, a Saturday, I called the special repairs number provided and got their interactive voice response unit that claimed they were open, but no one answered my call.  The system also stated that I would have an opportunity to leave my contact information, but that didn’t happen either.  Perhaps I was supposed to call more than five times throughout the day to prove my sincerity in wanting to reach someone.  I finally reached a human being on Monday and we again arranged for my computer to be picked up and taken to the repair facility.  I wasn’t happy.  There were things going on in my life that required that I have access to OneNote, but I have the 2007 version on my netbook and the 2010 version on my laptop and, conveniently, they are not compatible (thank you Microsoft).

So the following Wednesday came with some anticipation of finally getting my computer back.  The day came to a close and no computer.  Hmmmm… maybe I misunderstood and it was being shipped on Wednesday.  Yeah, that’s the ticket.  Thursday came and went and still no computer.  The handy-dandy HP repairs website gives practically no information about the actual status of your repair.  As I sat and seethed, I became more and more angry about the situation.

I finally got ahold of someone in Mumbai or some other sub-continent call center.  She was very polite and offered to send an “urgent” email to the repair facility to get to the bottom of this.  An email.  No information was available regarding the status of my repair.  She could not contact the repair center.  She had no way to research the matter.  What she could do, was the modern version of push papers around on the desk… send an email. 

Not being satisfied with that response, I called back and spoke with a gentleman who was actually less helpful, which took quite an effort.  Based on the horrible experience I had endured, he suggested that I take out another year of warranty service.  I did, but did not feel right about the way it was presented.  I still could not speak to anyone in the repairs area who might be able to say if or when my computer was fixed, when it might ship or anything else one might want to know about a computer that had now been out of commission for nearly a month.

Enough.  It may not pay off, but I decided to send my own email to Meg Whitman, president and CEO of HP, and politely but firmly vented (no point in ticking off the one person who may be able to help).

To my great delight and surprise, I got a call the next day from CeCe in the HP executive office.  She apologized profusely and said that I was to deal with no one else going forward; she would be my sole point of contact until I had my computer back.  She had already been in touch with the repair center and said it was going through bench testing that day to make sure the problem was fixed.  She also said she would send a $200.00 gift card for HP products to atone for the problems I had gone through.  Having been in the customer service realm for nearly 20 years, I appreciated her professionalism and the fact that she took ownership of the situation.  Problems happen and mistakes are made – it’s how you fix those problems that counts and I was impressed.  I didn’t think there would be anything on the HP website that I would want to buy, but I appreciated the gesture (it turns out that they have a lot of items well under $200.00 that I am interested in).

That was Friday.  The following Monday, I got another call from HP, this time from a man who said that CeCe was off that day and that he was working her file.  He confirmed that my computer had been fixed (they replaced the screen altogether) and would be shipping it first thing in the morning.  He further stated that he felt uncomfortable with the way I had been sold the additional year of warranty.  He refunded the amount I had paid but let the warranty remain.

So the bottom line is, I got a $200.00 gift card and an extra year’s warranty for my troubles.  I would say that HP has gone above and beyond to remedy the matter.  I would have preferred not to have been put through all that, but I have to give credit to the HP executive office for doing a smashing job of restoring my faith in them.