Not impressed with HP customer service

[True Dough]

I'm on my 6th laptop in my lifetime. First four were Toshibas. Generally served me well, all lasting 5 years or so. When I went back for a 5th laptop, I found the Toshibas felt like they'd declined in quality, seemed cheap. Went with a Lenovo instead (my dad and sister each have one and they were satisfied). Long story short, the Lenovo lasted me only 4 years and had touch pad issues from the start, which required sending it in for repair.

Anyway, in my latest quest for a new laptop, in January, I settled on an HP Pavilion. Within a month of having it home, it went to a black screen on three occasions after I removed the AC adapter. This didn't occur in succession, it was intermittent.

I was too busy to call support and finally got around to it earlier this week. What ensued was a BIOS update, a CMOS update, an update of drivers, a batter test and an AC adapter test. Probably a few other things but I cannot recall.

The two technicians I dealt with on the phone both made repeated attempts to sell me extended warranty. I declined because I never go for that. Then came the kicker: the second technician said, "Okay. Everything has been updated. Just to set expectations, I notice you don't have an anti-virus program on your laptop. If you experience this problem again, it is because viruses and malware have already infected your computer."

Uh, no. I told her I wasn't going to stand for that "explanation" because the problem has only occurred immediately after I have removed the power cord. That has nothing to do with a virus or malware, I'm sure. She backed down and said I could call again with my case number if the problem persists.

I don't expect HP to fix any virus or malware I might get (it should be noted, I use NoScript and I'm very careful about what I download/browse and I've never had a virus in 4 years). But this occasional problem that I've experienced doesn't strike me as being due to some malicious code.

Could I be wrong about that?

[SamKnause]

1. They suck.

I told them I would never buy another HP.

They lied and told me if I purchased the extended warranty they would fix my computer. (2 years old)

I fell for their bullshit.

After I purchased the warranty they told me they couldn't fix my computer.

I canceled the warranty and told them I would never buy another HP.

All of this occurred within a matter of hours.

The charge did not show up on my credit card, thank goodness.

[True Dough]

2. Yeah, they were pushing the extended warranty HARD

They even offered 20% off. Still a big NOPE!

[SamKnause]

3. They lied.

They told me if I bought the extended warranty they could instantly fix my computer,

and I wouldn't have to take it any where to be repaired.

They didn't ask me if my computer could access the internet.

One of my drivers had an issue.

That would have saved all of us a lot of time and hassle.

After I bought the extended warranty, they inform me they can't fix my computer.

What a rip off.

At least I had no problem with the cancellation.

They were not interested in helping me at all.

HP support is nothing but a ploy to sell you their extended warranty.

I did not have my computer repaired.

I bought a Dell.

[customerserviceguy]

4. Carly Fiorina

screwed that company into the ground, and all they've done since has been to dig deeper. I'm sorry that you bought an HP product.

I'm still using a twelve year old Dell Inspiron laptop that I picked up second hand for a hundred bucks in 2010. I put a few dollars into upgraded RAM, a second hard drive, a DVD burner and a couple of other bells and whistles, but it's running Win7 right now as I type this.

I agree with you about Toshibas, they were hot stuff a decade or two ago, but just don't quite measure up any more. I have a little Lenovo that I regret buying, and hardly ever use.

[True Dough]

5. A 12-year-old laptop?

Tell me it runs like molasses, at least?!?

All five of my previous laptops starting to grind to a halt between years four and five. They were still functioning but the waiting on even basic functions drove me to find replacements.

[customerserviceguy]

6. Nope

It's pretty quick for what I do, which doesn't include gaming.

When I got it, it only had 1 GB of RAM, and I spent most of my upgrade budget on 4 GB of RAM. It was running Vista, but I installed Win7, and the only trouble was finding the right video driver for the onboard chip.

But, I make damned good and sure that very little loads up automatically when the laptop is booted. That's what slows people down after a few years, so much of what download tries to run itself constantly, and that bogs down every processor eventually.

I do genetic genealogy on this laptop, and my spreadsheet of DNA matches is about 2000 people. It takes a bit of time to load a graphic, such as a photo of a Census page, but that mostly depends on my connection speed. I use a cable modem at home which tends to run faster late at night, and I use my smartphone as a hotspot while on the road. Some areas have poor support for Sprint phones.

Run "msconfig" (without the quotation marks) in a search window, from the Start button. Select the "Startup" tab, and see how many things are set to automatically start up when you boot up the laptop. Mine only starts four things, two of them are related to the video chip software, one is for the keyboard, and the last one is my antivirus, a free version of Avast. Unselect some of the things relating to software that you only use occasionally, then reboot, and see if that makes a difference.

[True Dough]

7. I'm not having problems with speed currently since this laptop is only four months old

It was my previous models that turned into snails.

I can't follow your instructions exactly on Windows 10 but, using task manager, I can see there are about 30 or more services running currently. I wouldn't turn off any of them without knowing exactly what they do first. Could Google them one by one, I suppose.

My CPU is running at no more than 6% capacity, my memory is at 39% used and the disk jumps around a lot, ranging between 5% and 21%.

[customerserviceguy]

8. So far, so good

If you still have one of the old ones laying around, you can try my suggestion and see if too many "terminate and stay resident" programs were running. Who knows, you might be able to give the old beast a second life!

I have to look up how to keep too many things from starting up on Win 10. And I'm up north now, my little laptop is back on my desk in SC. Man, it's cold up here, temp will get down to a bit below fifty tonight. We were frying in the Carolinas last week!