How to Get a Replacement After Two Failed Repair Attempts and Hours of Diag

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Hello,

Contained are pertinent details, some of which will be ranted. I am sorry, but this is making me crazy. I am at my wits end with HP, and from the looks of the forums and other online searches, I am far from the first or last. This has been the worst customer service experience I have ever had in my life, it is that bad. This has been going on 4 months of undue stress trying to get this resolved and living with problems on a machine I bought LESS THAN A YEAR AGO.

I bought a laptop for about $3500, so it wasn't exactly cheap, but it fit my wants and needs (school, games, work, 3D modelling). The screen goes black one day, call HP for diagnosis, they want it sent in. Take to Best Buy (purchased from), they take a quick look and verify the ribbon connector is connected, they would need to send it out. I ask for a replacement, they can't. Was worth a shot. I take it home, get it sent in for warranty myself. Not happy, not upset. Get it back, the thing has been obviously dropped on its corner and cracks the entire corner of the machine off. HP claims it as 'shipping damage'. I still test it quickly to see if the repair took, no issues. The repair slip says they reseated a connector. Hmmm.  Aside from shipping, this thing hasn't moved more than 5 feet in its life. They have me send it back after refusing replacement; they repair it and send it back several weeks after promised 'expedited 3-5 business day repair'. I am also curious what happened to the shipping insurance money, which would have covered a replacement.

They replaced a fair amount of the machine including the memory. Extensive diagnostics and that, the whole 9 yards, it must be good now.  I boot it. The machine now crashes, freezes, errors, random unprompted restarts, inability to fetch the user profile (resulting in a skeleton profile until restart) and runs terribly slow out the gate. First boot up, I am met with no less than a dozen sequential crashes, some that will resolve and reboot, and some that require a full hard reboot to bypass, lest the machine be frozen on an error screen indefinitely. I update EVERYTHING, which wasn't done at the repair center??? I don't believe they did anything but load the factory settings and ship it to get it out faster, because it was nigh unusable for the first hour IN THE EXACT STATE I RECEIVED IT IN. Unless the shipping magically altered the machine, this would have happened at the repair center. 

Crashes get a little bit better after updates, but the machine still has every symptom prior listed. I had emailed the case manager about it, but he had already closed the case without waiting for an update. I call HP, we troubleshoot, go into BIOS, into the diag media, do system testing. I am told, near verbatim on a recorded line: "If the problems persist then the next thing that will need to do is to reset the OS and that will fix it because this is definitely a software issue. Everything is showing fine though so there should not be any issues". The case was closed by time I tried to report issues within 48 hours of the call.

The problems persisted, the crashes got so bad one night that I wanted to put my face through a wall. Instead of HP at 11 PM, I spare myself the massive stress and anxiety and I get in contact with a friend that does computer repair officially in the industry. He takes stock of everything that's going on, has me double check some BIOS settings, verifies the PC is updated properly, drivers, etc. They are, but if it's a software issue then we'll start fresh with the OS like they recommended.  We create a thumb drive with a fresh Windows 11 media from Microsoft themself. It's an easy process.  BIOS boot order to prioritize the USB and install the fresh OS. Obviously, everything is wiped. It takes a long time to get everything set again on a computer for regular use again. A lot of things to download, be tweaked to be proper. Lost data, file transfers, cloud downloads. Signing into my entire life again across dozens of websites, hoping some critical info wasn't forgotten.

The machine runs marginally better for a period, but still slowly (stuttering at desktop, while watching videos, while doing anything). Then the first crash happens, they just keep coming. WATCHDOG ERRORS, HYPERVISION ERRORS, VIDEO TDR FAILURE, random black screen crashes, random reboots in the middle of save sensitive points. The same as it was, but more bipolar. Whereas before it was more of a constant issue of trying to get the machine to boot in a state that doesn't immediately crash or run in a detrimental fashion, now it will run fine for maybe a day and then have some issues, run fine and then have several issues in series.  I have a 20-minute video on my phone I took of constant issues with the machine throughout, wherein I believe I said 'but watch, if I call them they're gonna say "Oh but you didn't do the OS right, you didn't do it OUR way".

Come to find out, that is exactly what I was told after making a BBB complaint for replacement that same night. I am assigned a new case manager IMMEDIATELY, which was asked for (and promised) 2 months prior, who tells me that I needed to use the HP recovery media which will put it to its factory settings. Using Microsoft was the wrong way. So basically, the thing they claimed to do at the repair center I am now supposed to do. The thing their support agent told me to do was wrong, and I wasted tons of time with. It will involve (obviously) wiping the PC. I will then need to update it to the same version I have it at now. If it doesn't work, it will need to be sent in.

FULL STOP, IT IS TIME TO REPLACE RIGHT THERE. No matter what series of events occurred here, it's not my problem. In some way, HP failed a task, and I am supposed to deal with the fallout. I repeatedly ask for a replacement machine, each request becoming more reasonable than the last in the face of repair attempts and issues. Yet I am not being provided any options but which firing squad I would like. I have classes starting in 3 weeks. I am unable to properly enjoy this machine in my leisure time in the face of literal game-breaking issues. I try and watch movies at times, but the entire machine is stuttering so I need to watch on my phone instead. I lose progress in games with unsavable modes because the machine will randomly crash, restart or error. I can't get comfortable with the idea of needing to take an online university exam on a machine I paid $3500 for, because what happens if it crashes? I have explained all this and more to HP, and plead for help to no avail.

Now I ask ANYBODY here if they have some magic tricks to pull from their hat to help me along my way. I know in years past, there have been some instances of things getting done from here, but things change over the years. I realize there are only a handful of people here that are actually tied to HP. I am at the end of my rope with this. It feels anti-consumer to the maximum. I keep spinning the wheels and getting nowhere with tone-deaf case managers that 'completely understand' what you are saying, yet refuse proper aid. Almost 1 in 3 days I have owned this machine, it has either been out of my possession or in a worse state than it was before 'repairs'. This feels illegal, if this was a car it would fall under a lemon law by now

Please help