HP and me

After doing some evening grocery shopping (I like going to the supermarket at night, it's quiet), I went home and settled down. I grabbed my oh-so-lovely laptop and powered it on. It didn't boot up; what a surprise. I thought about how HP had left out a stick of RAM, so I started to suspect that the slot was defective. So I opened up my memory bay and removed one of my 1GB sticks. I powered the laptop on, and it booted up. Well, would you look at that. Apparently, my issue is with the slot. I think that's pretty funny since HP "replaced" my motherboard during the first repair. You would think a new motherboard wouldn't have any defective parts. Well, I needed to call HP anyway because of the missing RAM, so I grabbed my phone.

I called the HP number and waited till the automated prompts came on. Ignoring their "helpful" categories, I just said "customer service" repeatedly till the English-speaking computer transferred me to a live person that spoke "English". During the next hour, the various reps (because apparently, the HP people are soooooo specialized, they need to transfer you to different departments for EVERYTHING) apologized for any inconvenience, documented the case, asked me to check the label on my HP RAM chip, documented the case, told me they would order me another chip, documented the case, spoke with their supervisor, documented the case, asked for my info, documented the case, and oh, they documented the case. I think I talked for a total of 2 min, the reps talked for a total of 5, I was on hold for 10, and they documented the case for 43 min. Like I've said before, maybe they type with one finger, or instead of letters, their keyboards have words for keys and the keyboard takes up an entire office. Who the heck knows?

And guess what? At the end of the call, instead of telling me my RAM chip is on its way, the rep told me a supervisor will call me within 24 hours. Why? I don't know. Maybe they think I pretended not to receive my full memory and now I'm trying to cheat them out of $10. Maybe $15 for that stupid 512MB of RAM. I don't know. To top it off, they tell me my warranty is expired now and offered to extend it for two years for $130. I think about the "service" I've had with my two repair orders, and decided not to extend it. I'm tired of having to call in for an hour to get service. I'm tired of reading off a Case Number to them and have them tell me it's not a case number even thought it's printed on their HP notices with "Case Number" next to them. I'm tired of their stupidity and inefficiencies.

I just want the 512MB of RAM that is missing, because it belongs to me and they have no right to take it/leave it out/steal it. I don't care that one of my memory slots is not working. I don't care that my laptop can die at any moment. I don't care that it's only been a year. I want this to end. Then when the laptop is finished, which I'm thinking it will be soon, I'm going to spend my hard-earned cash on a reliable quality computer system. I will no longer recommend HP laptops. I will not recommend Compaq systems. I will no longer defend HP when my IT guy at work disses them (although HP does make nice printers).

Oh, and you bet I'm still going to write HP about my experience.