Company information:
MRC
Connecticut
United States
I purchased an HP Pavilion DV9000 Laptop last February (2008) online from HP.com. It came with Windows Vista pre-installed. In the first six months I noticed there were power issues, the desktop icon saying that it was “plugged in, not charging” at some point the power failed completely. Not only could I not charge the battery, but I also could not even run the notebook on AC power. I also noticed that the notebook was having trouble accessing the hard drive. Windows were hanging and vista was slow to close and open.
I called the support number and spoke to a tech, let me first say there was a significant language barrier, but after hashing the details out and coming to the conclusion that the power supply was the issue, not the Motherboard or battery, which I suggested (his direction, not mine) he sent me a new transformer/power cable. Less than six months later the computer started misbehaving again, same troubles as before, windows would hang or crash and there were times when AC power was plugged in and still not listed as charging, and then a major crash.
I called again and spoke to another CSR who also had a rather heavy accent but was more understandable than the last, I explained the problem as well as the previous issues and he concluded that the issue was software based; I contended that I believed that there were hardware issues as well. I cited the hard drive lag as well as many other issues I had in the interim. He never suggested a hardware replacement even though, as I recently discovered, there was a recall on the model I purchased in January of 08, covering the very issues I had.
On April 7, 2009 the computer had yet another catastrophic failure. I tried to restore data using the recovery console but to no avail, the system would not recognize the backup drive (I tested it and it was working fine) I recovered some of the data using Avast! Recovery and as soon as I tried to use the recovery console to reset to factory settings, the hard drive failed.
At this point I called HP tech support (3rd time in 1 year) and talked to a CSR, she was extremely helpful and patient but was unable to resolve my issue. I asked her to push me to a supervisor, who was immediately rude and insistent in the assertion that even though I had reported this as a problem and had been dissuaded from a repair that I should have called when the issue became apparent again. He tried to blame me for what was clearly a manufacturing defect, probably several. I expressed to him my annoyance that he had tried to place the blame on the shoddy design of their products on the consumer and even after going through great lengths to prove my case it was still “incumbent” upon me to follow up on an issue I had already reported.
The supervisor was rude, kept interrupting me and would not bow to reason. The fact seemed to be that HP wants to push even an inevitable failure from being replaced until after the warranty expires.
