This week my HP Laptop started to get extremely hot and two nights ago it smelled like it was burning! I was a bit freaked out I do admit. I powered it off and let it cool down for about 24 hours before trying to use it again. It quickly heated up again so I called HP. Remember my laptop fiasco with the dead hard drive back in the Fall of 2007? Well, it turns out that the replacement laptop they sent me uses a defective nVidia graphics card. But I didn't know that when I called HP last night. Nor did I know it when I got off the phone with HP last night.
The call was of course routed to India where the person couldn't hear me very well because there was a lot of static on the line. I couldn't hear the static, but he could and we couldn't terminate the call because I'd have to start all over in the process. He worked from a script and had me first turn off the laptop, take out the battery, unplug the AC adapter and press the start button to discharge the static. Then he had me turn the laptop back on and asked me if it was running cooler. I said no. Next he had me run a quick test on the hard drive to see if it would pass. It did. Then he had me update the BIOS (um, did that in December 08 and there wasn't a new version released since then). Started the laptop back up and he asked me again if the laptop was running cooler. Umm, no. The fan constantly runs. It's hot to touch. You can't even type on it because it's too hot.
They said it had to go in for repair and they thought it was either a problem with the processor or the hard drive and it would take 2 weeks before I'd get it back. This caused me heartache to hear this because how can one live without a computer for 2 weeks? From online banking, to online businesses, to keeping in touch with the world - I'll be lost.
However, after the call ended I did a google search and the first item that popped up was an HP forum where hundreds of people have documented the very same problem. That surprised me because I specifically asked the HP rep if others have reported this problem and he said no. WHAT? How could you not know this?
Further research yielded that nVidia released into the market defective chips from May 2007 until September 2008 and didn't acknowledge the problem until late summer of 2008. In August of 2008 they contributed $196 million dollars (to computer manufacturers) to fix these computers (both desktops and laptops). So my question is: why didn't HP notify owners of computers with these chips that they were defective? My laptop could have caught fire two nights ago! I almost burned myself on it. What, is this the Ford Pinto case all over again? It's cheaper to deal with the aftermath (pay of the grieving relatives) than fix the problem?
I called HP back and told them I was appalled that I got the run around about my issue when it's well documented on the internet. I requested that my laptop not be repaired as repairs are not working (evidence from the forum posts) and the fact that my laptop smelled like it was burning (other permanent damage could have occurred). My case was elevated to a case manager and now I'm just waiting for someone to call me.
Stay tuned...we will see what happens.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment