Hewlett-Packard Company Desktops Consumer Reviews - Page 2

In August of 2009 I purchased a desktop computer from Hewlett Packard and have been subjected to nothing but grief since. The computer shortly began to seize up along with spectacular psychedelic displays and shut downs of other varieties. After about 50 to 100 hours on the phone with their "technical support" people (from Delhi, Hydrabad, The Philippines, and Mexico City), many of whom had me try all kinds of tests, even to taking the thing apart to try something else, they finally agreed to send it back to the factory.

The factory found the graphics card and mother board to be defective, replaced them and sent the unit back. Within a few days the same problems appeared again. Another 50 to 100 hours on the phone and the unit was returned to the factory again, This time they found that the graphics card was again defective as was the hard drive, They replaced them and sent the unit back again,

Within a couple of days the same problems reappeared. More time on the phone but this time I was referred to a "Case Manager". I asked them why they didn't just replace the unit as it had to have cost them hundreds, if not thousands of dollars working on a severely defective unit, not to mention my upwards of 200 hours on the phone and personal loss of service. Their response was that that was policy and when I asked to speak to a manager, I was told sorry, but that was as high as I was allowed to go! And it is as, try as I might I couldn't get any higher.

Still no resolution, but the unit was sent back to the factory for the third time just the other day. Do I expect satisfaction? You bet I don't, at least not from this company. And to make the cheese more binding, I got an earful from the Fed Ex driver as he picked up the unit. He stated he'd never buy a HP computer. He recognized the box to HP immediately, pointed out two of my neighbors that had been sending their units back as well, and said he sees HP return shipping boxes coming into the Fed Ex distribution center all the time. Would I buy an HP again? No way! I probably wouldn't get the chance anyway because they'll probably be out of business soon at this rate!

Beware. This company has the worst customer service I have ever seen. That might not be so bad if the products were excellent and didn't need service. But HP offers the worst of both worlds - second rate products that have a history of repair problems and terrible service.

I made the mistake of buying an HP Pavilion Elite and an HPw2558w 25 inch monitor. Since May 2009, I have had one internal hard drive go bad, two Hpw2558 monitors go bad ($525 monitor), a video card go bad and now a 500 GB media drive, model no. hd5000s. I made the mistake of buying a service pack on the computer, my monitor and a new HP printer I bought. Total cost: about $1,600.

My life has been living hell ever since. Every time I call support, I spend literally hours on the phone. I often have to call back and spend hours more on the phone without resolving the problems. The warranty is a fraud - not the next day service HP promise and the telephone support offered is ridiculous. The last time I called in they insisted on sending me a box so I could mail in the part for repairs. Five days later, I received the box. It was too small for the media drive. I had to call in again and request another box. Here is a sampling of one of my many conversations with an HP representative.

What kind of a warranty is that? Either they offer next day service or they don't. Customers are being bilked by HP. If you are thinking about buying HP - don't do it. It will make your life miserable. I hope some plaintiff's attorney or attorney general sues the pants off this company for offering bogus warranties.

I bought this computer two months ago. I tried loading software with the DVD driver and It did not read the software. I thought it was the software. I bought a Microsoft Word Software package and tried loading it with the DVD drive. It would not load. I called customer service and spoke to "Ali". After spending an hour in a half on the phone, he told me what I already knew. The DVD drive does not work. OK, so I expect that they will fix it since the computer is under warranty.

Instead, they are going to send me the part and I have to install it. They also required that I give them a credit card before they would send the part. If I want them to actually send a repairman, they would charge me $99. When I questioned this, the customer service person told me I should have read the warranty that came with the computer. Fine, maybe so, but I expect that for a brand new computer, I should not have to fix it myself.

Also, I had a problem with the Works software that came with the computer and used their online service to try to fix it. When I told the customer service representative about this problem, he said I should never use the online service. Why would they give this as an option if they don't want it to be used?

When he could not get the program to work, he told me I needed to pay $149 for new software to get to be able to use the Works program. I had already bought the Word program, but why I should have to pay for software that I already paid for when I bought the computer. He also tried to get me to buy the Norton Antivirus software while I was on the phone. HP can't fix my computer and wants me to give them more money. I will never buy another piece of equipment from this company and I will tell anyone I know not to buy from HP.

I bought my computer from Radio Shack almost two years ago and within a year it had to be returned to the factory for new motherboard and power supply. Since then the tech support has disabled my printer and now they want me a non tech type to trouble shoot my computer. I scheduled a call back which was never made to me. What a crock of horse pucky. All I want is my computer fixed or replaced and all I hear is I don't have the authority to authorize that.

Maybe when I talk to the lackey's in the corporate office I can get some satisfaction. I even emailed the CEO Mark Hurd and told him point blank I don't want to hear from one of his lackey's but from him personally - like that will happen. Well, when I get an attorney and begin the process of suing them for breach of contract maybe then I will hear from someone higher up than a 2nd level manager. Their service or lack of it is very tiresome. Time to wake up and smell the coffee HP customers are leaving you in droves. I have chased several people away from buying an HP computer at wall mart. It is a cheap price for a cheap product.

And I hate dealing with tech support in India. They don't speak or understand English very well. It is time to open a call center in the United States, as there are plenty of people with computer skills that have been laid off and could use the job. And I think do it better than those overseas tech supporters.

You had better believe I am po'd at this situation. Totally po'd. I paid good money for this computer and I expect to work for a long time. My Gateway was a much better product and if I had had the money at the time when I had to replace mine, it would have been a gateway. I never treat my customers this way and I am a CSR and if I treated them the way I have been treated I would have been the biggest white basketball you have ever seen bouncing down the street as I would have been bounced onto my butt from my job, in a skinny minute. Now it is time for one of them to get their butts bounced. Enough is enough.

ROANOKE, VIRGINIA -- Purchased this computer new late January after my last HP desktop died. My father had just passed away and I needed a computer at the time to handle all his affairs and insurance etc. I hooked up the computer and everything seemed fine until the first time I tried to do the backup and burn data to discs with it. The computer would not format the discs or complete the backup and could not burn data to discs that were not formatted and the format always failed. Ran the diagnostics on the drive on the computer's H drive and every diagnostic failed for DVDRW, CDR and CDRW discs.

After countless online sessions with customer support both online and on the phone in which they continually tried find someway to bypass the problem rather than sending someone out to fix it or replacing it under the warranty I finally had enough and emailed them to get the computer fixed by sending someone out to repair it or send me a new one.

Needless to say, that's been over a month ago and several weeks since I sent a letter of complaint to the president of the company detailing all the problems I have with the computer which is totally worthless for anything except browsing the net I still am stuck with it. It's been five months now and I must have spent sixty hours online with tech support trying to get around the problems with the drives. Also, you always get a tech support person who cannot seem to speak or understand English either which only adds to the frustration.

This computer was supposed to have a year warranty on parts and labor and I have received no reply to my emails or written letters to tech support and the president with regards to my experience. I have bought three previous computers and they were all HP but you can rest assured I nor anyone in my family will never buy another one after this experience. I guess they are too busy having a custom chopper built by the Tuttles at Orange County Choppers to worry about the people like me who were loyal customers with real problems with their products.

Last month, I bought a new HP Pavilion desktop. It was defective at the outset, periodically shutting down and re-booting unexpectedly. After numerous contacts with tech support, only recourse was to return to HP for bench repair. It was returned 10 days later. Upon unpacking, something was noisily rattling around inside the case. When hooked up, the unit would not operate.

Opening the case, it turned out that the fan unit was totally detached, and there seemed to be a number of unconnected wires. It was clear that the unit had been shipped this way -- the problem could not have been due to transit damage. Called tech support, explained problem, and was assured that I would hear back later that afternoon. That did not happened. Called again in the evening. Only recourse is to go through the whole return-repair routine again. Whither quality controls and customer satisfaction? How much outrage does HP expect us to tolerate?

Bought an HP desktop 14 months only and it crashed. Called HP for help about 5 times, spent several hours on the phone and got nowhere. My computer is still down. They do not want to repair my computer, rather they want to go over the same steps I have tried 5 times already. They also will not upgrade my warranty, but wants me to pay out of pocket to repair my computer and then I still do not have a repair warranty. This is such nonsense.

It is all in their favor, but they want us the consumer to buy their product. Please do not purchase and HP products. I am sorry I did, but I have learned my lesson. I will have to take my computer to a shop. Just as the warranty expires, it broke, imagine that. HP is just like a lemon/car.

I've sent the same information to HP twice for a purchase made in August 2007 yet their website says that the rebate can't be processed. After considerable time, I finally located a phone number of the rebate center only to get a message that I must call back later. The computer/monitor bundle had two rebates. The one from Office Depot came with no problems but HP simply wants to wear the customer down by asking for info already sent. I'm not stupid, I sent exactly what they asked for. What a scam. I used to think a lot of HP. Not now.

SAINT CLAIR SHORES, MICHIGAN -- I have had nothing but problems with my Hewlett Packard computer since I purchased it. I have had to speak to their technicians and after hours of trying to solve the problem my computer totally crashed. They stated they would call me back and they did not. Extremely hard to understand their technicians in India. They sent me recovery discs that did not work. I sent in my computer and after 2 weeks I received it back and it is worse than ever. How can this happen?

I cannot afford to purchase a new computer to replace one that is less than 2 years old. No one uses this computer but me an adult. I had 2 Gateways that lasted for 8 and 9 years. If Gateway hadn't been sold I would have purchased another Gateway. Please do your research. Very poor quality and extremely poor technical follow up and help! HP if you want to contact me you will have to use the mail since I can not get into my e-mail.

PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA -- On 1/14/2011, I purchased a new HP desktop computer. On 1/31, Intel announced a problem that could cause a degradation over time and make the hard drive unavailable to the system. On 2/2, I raised this concern with HP. HP did not seem aware of the issue and said that unless I had an actual hard drive failure, nothing could be done.

On 8/1, my system reported a degraded RAID array and one of the RAID hard drives was inaccessible. HP replaced the motherboard and hard drive. The same RAID degradation and drive problem recurred on 10/8. I again contacted tech support, but got nowhere and requested that my issue be escalated to a customer support supervisor.

The supervisor claimed that the problem is not related to the Intel recall and that there is no other remedy they can provide. I asked him how I could ever trust this machine, and he responded that every computer is subject to hard disk failure at some point, so until that happens you can't say whether the machine is reliable or not. After lengthy and frustrating telephone discussions with this supervisor, I sent the machine back again and they once more replaced the hard drive.

I received the repaired machine on 11/4, and it immediately showed the same problem--a degraded RAID array with one disk inaccessible. I contacted the supervisor that day and requested a refund. He refused any solution other than to once more replace the hard drive. The warranty on this machine states that HP may "repair or replace any component or hardware product that manifests a defect." How many times do they expect customers to go through this repair/failure cycle?