Spacer in front USB port came out... Port is unusable. Microcenter says it is user induced damage!

[Burlington3]

We recently purchased a Victus 15L desktop computer from HP. After less than one month of use, one of the front USB ports broke while pulling out a USB cable. There is a little black spacer in the port and that broke off when the cable was pulled out. We contacted Microcenter as an authorized dealer to service the computer and the technician there indicated that it would be viewed as customer induced damage and then not covered under warranty. We have many, many USB ports on many devices from phones, to chargers, to computers, and never, in probably thousands of times of plugging and unplugging have we had a USB port break like this. It is clearly a defective port. The Microcenter tech indicated the only fix is a replacement case which would have to be ordered from HP at significant cost, and then the internal components all transferred to the new case. Sounds very expensive just to fix one USB port.

I am very, very frustrated with this situation. Further, HP makes it nearly impossible to contact someone from the company. There are all of these circular re-directs back to the Microcenter authorized dealer. The Chat is a bot without any way to speak to a person. This is something very small, but super frustrating how hard it is to get any assistance. Does anyone on the community know a phone number where we could speak to a Person who works for HP to see if we can get this fixed under warranty? 

My sincere appreciation in advance to anyone who can assist me.

Dan

[Betty0610]

@Burlington3

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