Way to Go, Walmart! HP? Not So Much.....

So the fine folks at HP have been busy, busy, busy emailing me.  They want the serial number of my laptop.  I told them I have a desktop.  They tell me they can't fix my laptop without the serial number.  I tell them again, I don't have a laptop, I have a desktop, and I already provided the serial number.  It is on file.  They tell me, "Desktops are a different department.  We can help with your laptop - just as soon as you send us the serial number."   Oh. My. God.  I am tearing my hair out, here.  I have had seven emails from different people, all in the laptop department, all asking for the serial number, all with in the last 24 hours.  No wonder they charge so much for a  new PC.  They are paying a whole herd of people to do, essentially, nothing useful.

On the phone, I get a desktop support guy, but the call is dropped.  I don't think it was deliberate, as we were having a nice conversation, but they did not call me back.  So I called again, got someone else, had to go through the whole story again.  The call center for HP is in India, and the reps I talked to had heavy accents, so maybe I didn't understand exactly, but I know for sure they told me my PC was purchased last August, which I know for certain is not right.  Bro did not spend a dime on anything except food and fuel until his divorce was final in September.  I KNOW he bought this PC for me right before he moved out in December.  I even wrote a post about it.   So I KNOW it was purchased in November.  Why does it matter?   There's a one-year warranty. If I'm right, the service to fix it is paid for by HP.

So we went back and forth a bit, and the rep said if I didn't have a receipt to prove my claim I would have to pony up $60 for the priviledge of speaking to him, once, while he tries to help me troubleshoot my PC.  Keep in mind that I had a difficult time understanding a lot of what he said.  To me, if you want me to pay sixty bucks for a phone call, you better have someone without a heavy accent on the other end of the line.  I told him, no, thank you.  I also told him that I am disappointed that an expensive PC did not even last a year, and that my old Dell is over ten years old and has never needed service.  He thanked me for choosing HP, and I told him, "Let me be clear:  I did not choose HP.  And based on this experience, I would not choose HP in the future."

By this time, I was pretty frustrated, and my cold medicine was wearing off so I was coughing up a storm.  I decided to go to bed and deal with it all in the morning.  When Walker got home, he called Walmart for me.  He gave them the serial number from the PC and they called him back a short time later to let him know they had a copy of the receipt and he could pick it up any time.  He drove over and got it, then faxed it to HP.  HP responded that they need 48 hours to update my records with the purchase date.  Two days???  To add a date to a case log????  Yep, they said they need two days.  So we're in limbo. 

In the mean time, I dusted off the Dell which was packed away in my basement.  Sure, it's a little slow....but it works.  Unlike the HP.