I too also fell for the warranty trap. I purchased my HP Pavillian DV1000 on 08-22 at a big box store. It came with a one year warranty.
Well on June 16th 0f 2006 when the LCD died I called the store and they told me to bring it to any store. When I showed it to the Tech his exact words were "Oh, you have that model". Not a good thing to hear as a consumer. He also gave me the number I should call. I looked at him and said "This goes straight to India doesn't it? ". He kinda smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
I called the HP helpdesk, I gave "John" the info he asked for name, sn, pn and service id. As I explained the problem to "John", he informed me that my warranty was due to expire very soon, like in 1 week. I begged to differ with him and said I still have 2 months before the 1 year period was up.
John then told me it was not when I bought the computer, but rather the date the computer was manufactured!! This is assinnine and told him so, to which he replied that for $99.00 I could purchase another year of coverage. I still wanted to argue the lenght of what a year is in the US.
Anyway I ended up buying the warranty thinking that if it already crapped out in the first 10 months I better get this becaused I smelled a lemon. So he had me try a few thing that I had already performed. That did not resolve the issue. He inturn handed me off to "Mary", (true names by the way) and she would give me all the details of how to go about shipping the machine in for repair, oh and also arrange the payment method I would use to purchase the warranty. Okay, I shipped it and 4 days later I get it back and everything is fine, went better than I expected.
Okay now the fun part. So on Feb 6th 7 months later my LCD has failed again. This time pink pixels appear on my screen, some solid background areas as well as splochy areas on my toolbars and spraying accross pictures and such. Right now I am typing on a awful pink background with white around the black letters making it very very difficult to read, let alone type on. Sorry for any typos.
So I call the helpdesk and after the exchange of info the tech informs me that according to the records my machine is out of warranty!!! I about hit the roof! I explained to him what a year was. "Sorry sir I have no record of that" is what he told me. He said I would have to prove that I purchased the warranty!
That I would have to fax the original receipt along with my bank statement showing the purchase to them in order to do anything further. I was fuming!!
The next day from work I faxed the info, half an hour later I get an email stating
"Thank you for contacting HP Total Care. We appreciate the opportunity to assist you. We would like to inform you that we have received your fax, but the date of purchase was not clear. We are unable to update the warranty status for your HP product. In order to update it, we request that you send it again or send the credit card statement. For your own security, please blot out the credit card number. Please send the
information to us either through an e-mail at [email protected] or fax it to us at 1-800-563-4860, and also please draw a circle around the date to highlight it. As soon as we receive it from you, we will update your records in our database."
I faxed them the info 4 or 5 times and got the same reply each time. Finally I decide to call them and get this straightened out. This time they try to inform me that my name does not match up with serial number. They are saying that they show another name as the registered owner. This is becoming a nightmare!!!
Total time on phone spent so far for the calls, 3 hours!! I am going to call one more time but I just had to tell this to someone, thanks for listening, sorry it is so long winded but enen this is a shortened version. Will keep posting the results. Sorry.
Craig
Parma Heights, Ohio
U.S.A.
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