HP Technical Service is a joke

[georgiabubba]

I have been an HP fan for several years, I have several local small business's that use me to keep up there computers and have always recommended HP over all the rest but after my recent experiance with the phone technical support and HP's repair centers I will be working with other providers. I have a friend which purchased a very expensive HP laptop a little over a year ago. 16 Months after his purchase his left hinge broke and his computer started hanging up when booting up. He brought it to me to help him out. When I called HP they at first told me it was out of warranty and I was on my own. So my friend had to shell out over 300 dollars to fix the hinges. Less than a week later HP put out a servvice bulliten recalling the hinges and the boot problems. After several phone calls they agreed to repair the boot problem under warranty and would "look into" reinbursing us for the hinge parts. He shipped it to HP around the end of December, on 1/9 HP returned it saying it was repaired. Two days later.. same problem. We call HP again and shipped it back to them. On Feb 3rd HP calls and informs us that due to back orders he will not get his laptop back until Feb 17th.. needless to say he ain't happy. BUT!! at 3:00 pm that same day 2/3 the Fedex guy brings him his laptop.. go figure. He opens his laptop, turns it on and BAM!! NO screen.. nothing. you can here the XP boot up sounds but the screen is black. We e-mail HP again expalining how the laptop is still not working. HP promply replys back as to how sorry the are and they will immediatly send out another Fedex box for him to send it back again. But this morning (Thursday) he gets an e-mail from HP with his service order number, when he goes to the page for this service order number it is the same service order number for repair number two. This page explains how his laptop will be shipped on Feb 4th..and he should receive it on Feb 17th. While this may seem like an excessive shipping schedule it is not as he actually received it on Feb 3rd... the day BEFORE they shipped it, I will be using Fedex for all my shipments. Upon realizing that he will probably not be getting a box to return his broke laptop back to HP in we decide to call HP's service line... BIG MISTAKE!!! After over an hour and a half on the phone with the einstein of computers we finally got it through his head that if your screen will not come on it really does you no good to press the function keys or try to go into the bios. While I realize that this forum is not the place for airing any greivinces with HP. I have already tried E-mail and phone support and this seems like a good a place as any to get it off my chest.