A few weeks ago I accidentally dropped my clip board onto my laptop screen. Because of this, I have a scratch in the monitor. Now, when I purchased my laptop I thought that with my warranty I’d be covered for all screen issues. I could care less that there’s a small scratch on my laptop keyboard because #1 – That was my fault, #2 it’s not noticeable to anyone unless you really look.
I called up HP a few moments ago and after dealing with one of those useless yes/no phone bots, I was finally connected to a representative that doesn’t speak a word of English but insists her name is “Donna”. After straining to understand her I was finally giving her my serial number, product number and phone number so she could bring up my account.
I told her that there is a scratch on the screen. It has not effected anything mechanically, I can still see everything behind it. It’s just the protective layer. I figured this would be an easy fix…but I was wrong.
It took her three times of repeating herself for me to understand the cost for this fix. A whopping $290. I blinked and said “Pardon? I thought this was under the warranty.” She went on to say “No, you have no accidental damage coverage.”
So I sat there for a second and went on to say that about 5 months ago my laptop was shipped back to HP (with no problems) when there was a bug floating around my screen. The lady went on to tell me that a bug in the screen isn’t really accidental damage. So I’m confused. It’s not like I intentionally put the bug in my screen. And it’s not like I intentionally dropped my clipboard on the monitor either.
She went on to tell me that it’s $290 and I’ll have to pay that in order for the laptop to even be returned to me. So this means when it shows up there they’ll fix it and hold it captive until I pay up. Sorry, that’s not going to happen. I’m not even going to bother sending it in now.
I’ve gotten used to the scratch, so it isn’t effecting me as much as one with huge line in their monitor would think. I can still see everything I need to see and there are no ‘dead zones’ on the monitor anyway. I want to assume that if there are dead pixels on the monitor that would be covered under the warranty, I have about 6 of them now. I figure if I can get myself up to 10 of them than I can just send it back to HP and it will resolve the scratch as well.
See…there’s always ways to get around things.
I am a bit disappointed in HP though. For a company that’s held in such high regard by many computer savvy nerds, they sure do cut cost by out sourcing all of their support to another country. If they could be smart and just move the support during normal business hours back to the states, I think it would work out better for everyone. It would be nice, for a damn change, to speak to someone who knows more English than what’s put onto a post-it note on the monitor in front of them.
It was my goal to send out my laptop this week because I’m leaving on Friday to spend a week (maybe more) with the boyfriend. Because of this, I have no real need for my laptop to be with me. He has a few computers and he’s nice enough to let me use one of them whenever I need it. I figured that while he’s doing his own thing on one computer during the day, I can just do some quick email based shit on the other and go from there. I wasn’t expecting to have my laptop with me full time next week so I guess I’ll just have to set myself up and leave it there while I work.
I’m finally on top of all of my emails. I’m in the process of emailing the final person now. It’s hard to get ahead when I keep going away for weeks at a time and have limited ‘net access or computer access in general. There’s also my issue of getting lazy, to be honest. If I’m sitting in the living room at my aunts house it’s hard to stay awake. While the couch is broken and very uncomfortable…you’re basically stuck in a hole that you can easily drift off to sleep in. When you’ve got that going on, plus Figgie sitting on top of you falling asleep himself…it’s just not easy to get anything done.
My new luggage is here, I’m slowly packing things up. I figure since I’m leaving on Friday I can easily pack up a few clothes and other items here and there. All of my hair care and other are usually in one place anyway so I just threw them into the bag and when it comes to my hair I’m basically living out of a suitcase LOL.
It’s about 5:40 and I guess I should go start dinner. Not sure what I’m in the mood to make but I’m sure I’ll be able to find something somewhere.
Later gators.