I have sent your problem to my HP rep and he has sent it to the commercial support manager. We will see if it does any good. ~ J. P., Software License Manager at a large defense contractor

I saw your site. HP's TECH SUPPORT—don't get me started! My first HP PC, which was a built-to-order, had a problem and they told me I had to send it to Texas to get fixed. I waited a week plus for an empty box to arrive from them for me to ship it in. They told me they'd have it for, I think, 2 weeks, and they ended up having it for a month. I got the PC back with a big gash on the front and the problem still not fixed. I called to complain, and found out that instead of sending it to Texas, I could've dropped it off at a local certified tech shop. There were 3 in the area, 2 of which were ON THE STREET I WORKED ON, and one of those was in a building my company had an office in. … ~ A. H.

Ran into a similar problem with an HP laptop that my friend had purchased for me as a present. Not only did the laptop keep burning up, but they kept sending the repaired laptop back to her address in another state even though I repeated told them to send it back to me. … ~ E. W.

I have read your blog concerning the supports problems you are having. This concerns me as an HP employee. … ~ D. S., HP employee

It better! —Scott

Your blog was passed to me. I am an HP Employee and am working with internal partners to find a resolution asap. I will stay in touch and let you know when I hear more. Already, your blog has made it's way to a few people who may be able to help. ~ M. W., HP employee

It's just sad that it takes all this for a problem to be solved. —Scott

As a former HP employee, all I can say is—buy a Dell next time. … Isn't outsourcing great? HP "saves" money by connecting you with someone who can barely speak English and who has the same tech-savvy as a Best Buy salesperson. Why can't they figure out that it's actually costing them more because of poor souls like you who just want their problem solved. ~ M. K.

No way I'm buying a Dell, but your other comment is spot on. —Scott

An acquaintance of mine bought an HP system back in '98. He got it customized direct from HP, and he got all the features. This machine cost him over $3K—he skimped on nothing. And that's just the box, no monitor.

It was dead within a month. Dead, inoperable-like. ~ J. H.

I work at a university and we own a wide format plotter from HP with 3 year onsite. It took 8 months for them to come on site and each time they made our printer progressively worse. Close to two years later they finally just replaced our printer. They're complete fuck ups for lack of better/prettier words. ~ E. M.

Gotta agree with that last sentiment … —Scott

I work for HP (although I have nothing to do with desktop support). I will be happy to log your issue into a system we have to help customers that are having trouble getting the results they need. ~ S. G.

I appreciate the offer, but it shouldn't have to come to this! —Scott

First off, as you can tell by the email address, I work for HP. I do not work for the PC group or in customer service. I'm just an engineer who saw your plight through digg.com and am deeply disturbed at the "service" you are receiving through HP support. I would like to help. We have an internal website that employees can access to enter customer complaints. I have utilized this twice in the past with good results. … ~ J. G.

If all of HP was still like these engineers, it'd be a great company for consumers. But again … why should it have to come to using the internal web site?! —Scott

Ugh, I'm sorry that you're having problems with your machine. I had a similar problem with them regarding a broken iPaq keyboard. Unfortunately, this was an issue for me even as an employee … ~ W. R., HP employee

I also happen to work for HP, in R&D for a totally unrelated division. If nobody's offered yet, I'd be willing to work your case from within the company. We've got a separate support system for requests filed by employees on behalf of customers which may get you better results. If not, I'm perfectly willing to get on the phone as well. What you've described is unacceptable. It pains me to see stories like this, since I know we generally mean well. … ~ R. M.

Again, the engineers are great! But customer service and tech support … and that's what will doom a company. —Scott

Hey, I was just reading about your experience with HP on your website, and I just wanted to let you know that you're not the only one. I bought an HP Pavillion about 6 months before you did, and I had it for only 6 months before parts of the motherboard died. The IDE controller woudn't see the drives, even though there was nothing wrong with them and they would work even if I simply put them on the unused channels. When it eventually died I was hesitant to call HP because of the tech support problems I had had with IBM, SBC, and Microsoft. When I did eventually call them, they didn't offer any help other than telling me my warranty was no longer valid, and of course detailed instructions on how to burn my own recovery cds from the recovery partition. I certainly didn't trust them enough to send them my computer, so I bought a motherboard from NewEgg and installed it myself. Of course, Windows XP's anti-piracy hardware detection features wouldn't let me log in, and it wouldn't even let me re-"activate". After more trouble with HP and Microsoft tech support, I gave up completely and bought Windows XP Pro seperately. Since then I've had to replace 2 hard drives, a video card, the case, and a cd-drive (and I had to switch to Linux because of XP problems). I've noticed that the fewer HP parts my computer still has, the better it runs. At least the processor and RAM held up, even if they were the only ones.

So don't think this is an isolated problem; HP does this to everyone. I appreciate you spreading the word for the rest of us. ~ M. B.

Best not to get me started on Microsoft … —Scott

I bought my mother in-law an HP laptop about a year ago. After a few weeks the machine started to spontaneously reboot , then the keyboard stoped working. We called hp and after some time the machine was shipped to Holland for repairs.

It came back with the same problems after the memory was replaced, went back to Holland twice had the mb replaced and came back not even booting. We got a replacement laptop ( which dyed completely after a few months—we bought a Toshiba ) and after playing with the old one I worked out it was a short on the small circuit holding the hdd and power led's.

Follwoing that incident my brother in-law who was a ceo of a medium sized company instructed his IT guys to stop buying any hp hardware. I have had similar experience with HP at work. ~ Z. M.

Please let your bosses know that stories profiling poor tech support from HP do have an effect. During our next upgrade cycle, I will be reluctant to recommend HP computers. ~ S. S.

I found a link to your page that outlined the issues you're having with your HP computer. I don't work in an area that deals with PCs, but I forwarded the link to an internal group that specializes in sorting out this type of insanity. If you don't get some resolution in a reasonable amount of time, let me know and I'll make some calls on your behalf. ~ B. W., HP employee

For what it's worth I had a similar problem to yours with HP about a year ago. I contacted the BBB and finally got a big-whig from HP to call me. If I remember correctly she was some sort of director on North American customer relations or something. At any rate, within a day or so of talking to her they got things corrected. ~ M.

That should never have to happen! —Scott

Ouch. A buddy of mine went through similar issues with his HP a couple of years ago. Hang in there!! ~ M. T.

I know exactly where you're coming from. When my Pavillion (also AMD64) had to get it's motherboard replaced due to a problem with the power jack, they sent me it back banged up and with an Athlon XP clocked at 1600Mhz. I talked to "Paul Richards" in India, and had to send it back no less than three times (once for the power issue, once for the case, and once to give me my 64 back!) I'm now having some battery issues that might be due to the processor switch, and was actually about to contact them AGAIN. ~ K. W.

Hi, I found your journal entry on www.digg.com and I know how bad HP support is, I used to work for them …

On 10/2005 when you had your issue with the screen and they said that you HAD to try a recovery cd first, thats a lie, I know that before I quit Stream (outsourced) in August, a month or two before I quit they changed their guidelines, we were then able to send any computer in for repairs without trying a recovery cd or anything else if the customer requested. ~ B. J.

I also had an amazingly bad experience with HP. Three motherboards later the pavillion I bought still doesn't work—this after only one year. I threw away $1800 for a computer that worked for a year. I too will never buy from HP again because of incredibly poor quality hardware and there customer service is terrible! ~ R. R.

You are most certainly correct in presuming HP is absolutely horrible. I do general IT consulting for a living. One of my clients decided to purchase 10 PCs for their office, and after a few months, one of them refused to boot. It was clear that the hard drive had failed.

When I initially called, the first tech told me the drive was out of warranty. The client had purchased the computer just a few months ago. In fact, the manufacturer's date stamped on the hard drive was AFTER the date he said the warranty expired on the unit. I offered to fax him a photocopy of the drive, showing the date & serial #. That shut them up (at least on that issue).

Anyway, I ran their utilities against the bad drive (per their request), printed out the information from SpinRite (just to make it painfully clear that it was in fact a bad drive, hopefully speeding up service), and offered to ship them just the drive (to save them shipping costs). They asked for the whole machine back, and sent me a packing box. Fine.

I sent it off, and they ship back the unit three weeks later. It has the exact same issue. In fact, my diagnostic notes are still taped to the exact same drive (the printouts showed the serial # from the drive). So after waiting almost a month for them to ship back a drive, I received the same unit back with the absolutely nothing done to it.

I had to (politely) raise bloody murder and refuse to take no for an answer before I received the hard drive. The client learned their lesson, thankfully, and has since purchased their computers from another vendor (at least 20 so far). I guess HP must be saving a ton of money by getting sub-par support techs and giving sub-par service, because they sure are losing a lot of new and future business (not to mention the quality of their brand name in lots of people's eyes) as a result. ~ J.

That last sentence is absolutely correct. HP is ruining what was once a great name. —Scott

My name is J—— B—— and I'm a design engineer for Hewlett-Packard. I just came across your blog titled HP's Horrible, Unhelpful, Incompetent Tech Support and Service. I was very much bothered by H-P's response to your computer issue. As a long time H-P employee, I take it personally when my company disappoints our customers. ~ J. B.

Tell me about it. 3 hours to get my DVD drive to reappear (why all my media drives disappeared in the first place is still beyond me). They wanted me to edit my BIOS and every other wacky "PC killing" thing you can think of. I'm surprised nobody asked me to throw the thing out a window. I had to call back 3 times but I finally got someone who knew what they were doing. God I hate HP….. ~ J. C.

I know that you will probably get this repeated to you many times, but do not but from HP. At my job we have purchased several HP (re-branded Compaqs) and all have had problems. ~ R. W.

I couldn't resist sharing a similar experience that my uncle had to go through with his HP Notebook(though it was not the display issue,but the notebook wouldn't work at all).After shipping the notebook back to HP,he was given a case number. A couple of days later,with no word whatsoever from HP, he called them and was re-routed to India where they repeatedly asked him for the pin on the notebook even though it was with them! After several other calls to them and the same fools asking for the pin,he demanded to speak to their supervisor but met with the same answer as you. He then finally wrote to the CEO of HP (yes,CEO) and they responded within 2 days and his case was assigned to an American guy. ~ K. T.