Envy Desktop Warranty is Worthless

[Sagramore]

My old computer could no longer run the computer game that I play. I needed something with a better video card. I found the HP Envy with an nVidida 3070ti for a good price. The machine worked well for about the first 6 months, but then it started failing about once a week. After a few more months once a week became once a day and after a little more time once a day became about once an hour.

The way the computer fails is that the 3070ti video card stops sending signals to the monitors and the the fans on the video card go to maximum power and stay there. Cycling the power is the only way to get it working again.

It only fails when the video card is working hard. If I’m sitting in the Windows desktop, it will never fail.

Is this a thermal problem, a failing video card, or a failing power supply. I don’t know. Luckily (or so I thought) I didn’t make this computer myself. It’s an HP computer and it’s still under Warrantee:

“… if you, the end-user customer, provides HP with notice of a defect in your HP Hardware Product during the Limited Warranty Period. HP's obligation under this HP Limited Warranty, at its option, to repair, replace, or provide a refund for an HP Hardware Product…”

Let’s see how it went.

I chatted with the first tech. He can’t look up my serial number and insists that my computer is out of warrantee.

It was under factory warrantee, and still is, but he bamboozled me enough that I bought an extended warranty. (This was a waste of money.)

I chatted with the second tech support guy. He takes control of my computer and installs a bunch of drivers. He installs Arc drivers and not nVidia drivers for some reason. He tells me they will be monitoring the computer and to call back if there are any problems.

I go off to play my game and the computer fails after about 20 minutes.

The third tech I chatted with, wanted to know the error number. The screens are blank. How could I see an error number? The tech doesn’t know what to do at this point. Then he asks me if it crashes when I run software, and I say that it crashes when I run this game, and so he tells me that it’s software error (it is clearly not), and to call their SmartFriend service.

I called the fourth tech at HP’s SmartFriend service, and he wants to charge me for his help. I told him that this is a warranty repair job and I’m not going to pay for it. So, he forwards me back to tech support.

I talked to the fifth tech support guy he gets my telephone number in case we are cut off and then shortly after we are cut off. I wait around for him to call me, but I never get a call.

I chatted with the sixth tech and right away he doubles down on it being a software error and wanted me to use their SmartFriend service. I argue with him that it’s not a software problem, that it is a hardware problem, and so he runs HP’s hardware check software which it passes. And he won’t do anything after that. This hardware check that he ran does not check the nVidia card. It will check an embedded GPU on the CPU, which weirdly my computer has, but it’s not being used and is not the source of the problem.

At this point I go to find some software that will test my video card. I found the FurMark test. The FurMark test will crash my computer in about two minutes.

Armed with this information I chat with the seventh tech. And to no surprise he wanted me to use HP’s paid SmartFriend service. I told him that this is a hardware problem, and that the computer is failing the FurMark hardware test. He says that they don’t trust third party hardware tests, that they only trust HP’s hardware tests. I showed him that HP’s hardware test only tests the imbedded Arc A770 GPU and not the nVidia 3070ti which is what appears to be failing. It doesn’t matter to him; it passes HP’s test so it’s not his problem.

At this point I just give up. They are not going to honor the warrantee; they are clearly instructed to upsell everyone to their SmartFriend service. It looks like HP is trying to turn their warranty repair service into profit center.

This is the condensed version; these conversations took over six hours over many days. I have never had as bad an experience with any tech support as I have had HP’s tech support. Given the things the techs said and did, I would say that they are novice computer users.

The sad thing is that 30 years ago HP’s service was rather good. I used to call up HP with a problem and they would ship me a new part and box with prepaid shipping to ship the broken part back. It was so easy.

[Dragon-Fur]

@Sagramore 

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