HP.COM

Yesterday, I gave a thumbs up to a couple on-line companies. But today, I must give HP a thumbs down. I have purchased several HP computers during the past few years. I like the way you can customize your purchase to get the configuration you want. I also purchased a couple 1TB USB 'Personal Media Drives' to use for backups. One of those drives started making a growling sound intermittently after a few months of use. So I sent it in for warranty repair with a note describing the problem and alerting them they may need to test the drive for an extended period to observe the bad bearing grinding. Weeks later, they returned it NDF (no defect found). But interestingly, the grinding noise was no longer present. Except a month later, the grinding noise came back. (Apparently, the vibration of shipping tamed the bad bearing for awhile.) This time I took the time to trace the noise to the exhaust fan in the back of the enclosure. Admittedly, a bad fan is not nearly the magnitude of problem as a hard drive going belly up. However, a warranty is a warranty and HP should honor it. I called them back. Several times. Over several months. Every time, it would take a half hour or more to reach a human I had difficulty understanding. But the story was always the same: "Your drive is no longer under warranty." The fact it was sent in under warranty and they did not correct the problem apparently is of no concern to any individual I spoke with -- not even a supervisor. And to add insult to injury, the primary drive in one of those desktop PCs I had purchased failed also, just two months out of warranty. Maybe buying from HP was not such a good idea after all.