Beware of Hp's Warranty Dept., They're Thieves!!

[russpetrone]

I recently sent in my hx4705 for a minor EXTERNAL repair, a bent battery door pin. The unit, due to a RAM upgrade to 128megs, was out of warranty. Hp knew of the upgrade and said it would be OK and that they would still work on the unit. I paid the deposit and subsequently the balance for a total of $170.

When I recieved the unit back, Hp had done a hard reset, which I couldn't understand, because we're talking external battery door, but so be it. Then, as I attempted to do a 'restore' the unit kept rejecting it, that's when I checked the RAM only to find that not only the extra 64megs RAM was gone, but the Mother Board had been replaced, thus causing the restore to fail.

Hp STOLE 64megs of RAM ....... and to date have refused to do anything about their thieving techs. So beware of what you send into them and be certain that whatever it is, it's well documented and you have every slobs name that you talk to, with date and time.

I WILL NEVER BUY ANOTHER Hp PRODUCT!! ....... and that's to bad, because I'm on my fourth(4th) iPAQ and at least a 1/2 dozen printers.

[Janak Parekh]

I hate to tell you this, but I'm not really surprised, and in fact, I'd be surprised if the extra 64MB had remained. Most such warranty places have repair technicians swap out boards on a routine basis. There's no guarantee that your unofficial RAM upgrade is kept, and I wouldn't really expect HP to honor doing so.

I presume your beef is that they replaced the logic board when it could have been avoided, and/or the support person on the phone was possibly misleading. While that may be true, it's up to HP's discretion as to what to replace... and the people replacing the parts are rarely the ones who speak on the phone. It'd be nice if there was an efficient note-passing mechanism, but there rarely is. While I understand you may never buy another HP again as a result, I would expect every handheld manufacturer on the industry to do this. It's the way it works, and is often a consequence of product cost-cutting. Companies like Apple, with their Genius Bars, are a rare exception.

In retrospect, what one should probably do in this case is to send the unit to the upgrading folks (Pocket PC Techs?) to be repaired -- since the unit is out of warranty anyway, they can do the appropriate repair while keeping the unofficial RAM upgrade in place.

--janak

[russpetrone]

Hp, having prior knowledge of the exisitance of the extra 64megs of RAM and verbally and in their work notes acknowledging it presence, should have informed me of the possible and/or real consequences I faced. For this reason and this reason only, I hold them 100% culpable for it's theft.

Lloyd at PPCTechs and I are almost best Buds over this issue and he has guided me through it's resolution and he should have the unit back from Hp this coming week to re-do the upgrade. (yup, the replaced board was faulty and had to be replaced again) And, from now on PPCTechs gets ALL of my out-of-warranty business. Hp is a joke on society!! :devilboy:

[Janak Parekh]

Lloyd at PPCTechs and I are almost best Buds over this issue and he has guided me through it's resolution and he should have the unit back from Hp this coming week to re-do the upgrade. (yup, the replaced board was faulty and had to be replaced again) And, from now on PPCTechs gets ALL of my out-of-warranty business. Hp is a joke on society!! :devilboy:
I'm glad you have a resolution, and I don't necessarily debate the post-Carly HP being a joke, as I've made frontpage rants on them before and had to return my 3870 three times before they managed to fix it properly (first two times they introduced problems instead of fixing them). My only real point was that, in my practical experience, this is pretty typical of repair scenarios from many vendors, with only a few exceptions.

--janak

[JimPAQ]

I also stopped buying from HP when I had to send an iPAQ in for repair. After about two months of use, the screen stopped responding when touched with the styles. I called tech support, did the hard reset etc etc. and then sent it back in per the tech's instructions. About a week later I got the unit back with a nice note stating that they had tested it, but found nothing wrong with it.

This went on for three months. Me calling in to tech support to tell them the unit still wasn't working. Doing hard resets, and sending the unit back in only to get it back with the "We found nothing wrong" note.

Finally after the third time I called back in and demanded to speak with a manager or someone else that could fix the problem. I told the manager what had happened; explained that I had had this iPAQ for a total of five months and for three of those months it hasn't worked. I swear on a stack of bibles, this is what the guy said to me...

"In all honesty sir, when you send in a device for repair, the tech runs a basic set of diagnostics on it, hard resets it, and if it passes, then they just send it back to you". Then he said "the objective of the techs is to get the units back out as quickly as they can". So he was basically saying that they don't really look at or test the unit, they just do a quick diagnostics on it, reset it, and package it back up and send it out. He went on to tell me that to "really" get my unit worked on, I would have to send it to an "advanced technician" which he explained would really investigate the issue.

I couldn't believe it. This guy was basically saying that they don't even test for the problem described in the case notes. It was pretty much at that point that I decided I wouldn't buy another HP PDA. I mean I just can't imagine having to go through that again.

Sadly, this seems to be more common with companies these days. It's like tech support for their products is an after thought or something. IMO, the support that a company provides is THE most important part of the product.

- Jim

[pocketpcadmirer]

I didnt had any such issue with HP though. I'm pretty happy with their service. A year ago, when I had iPAQ 2215, its speaker stopped functioning. Instead of charging me something, they replaced the unit for free(and it was out of warrenty). It was indeed a bolt out of blue. :D

Sunny

[Constant Caffeine]

I didnt had any such issue with HP though. I'm pretty happy with their service. A year ago, when I had iPAQ 2215, its speaker stopped functioning. Instead of charging me something, they replaced the unit for free(and it was out of warrenty). It was indeed a bolt out of blue. :D

Sunny

You are lucky. I have never seen HP do something for free out of warranty. Okay, fess up who do you know there? :wink:

[Constant Caffeine]

One more thing, I think they should have to return any defective parts you. I request the original parts when I have my car worked on, why can’t HP send the ‘defective’ parts back as well?