......Background:
About a month ago, i bought a 72.8gb 15krpm hp-branded cheetah 15k.3 drive from pcmark. The deal went smoothly and i got the well-packed drive quickly. I plugged it in, installed windows and transferred my data over. It worked great.
The next day, the drive wouldnt start properly. After a lot of testing, it seemed that the drive's heads were frozen in place. I froze the drive and it worked again for a few days. Then it happened again, so i froze it again. and it worked for almost a week this time. I decided that it was unacceptable and i called hp support. I was told that it was out of warranty on Dec 27 of 05, but i was in a grace period so they would let me return it anyway. However, they wanted me to get a hotswap cage and call back when i did. Apparently, you don't need a hotswap cage for the warranty to be valid, but you do need it if you want to return the hard drive.
So i talked to pcmark. He graciously gave me a hotswap cage for free and it arrived a few days later (the guy's a great trader, really, it's not his fault the drive died and he's been very helpfull and communicative the whole way).
It took a week for it to arrive and a few days for me to call hp.
......Rant:
I called hp on monday and was told that it was out of the grace period, and that they somehow lost their records of me calling and telling me to get a hotswap cage, then they'll rma it. The first guy i talked to did NOT record what he said and did NOT give me a case number. He effectively bought HP enough time to let the grace period lapse by telling me to get a hotswap cage. This behavior is really a devious way to screw someone out of an rma, but i guess it increases HP's profit margins. I've talked to about 10 different people at hp now, with EVERY SINGLE ONE of them telling me THE SAME THING. HP support is a bunch of trained monkeys, trained to screw you over. I really only recommend buying from hp when you KNOW they're losing money.
Deviously swindling a customer out of a return, especially on an enterprise level unit is a really poor thing to do for ANY company. I'd only expect this behavior out of a fly-by-night scam, not from such a large and well known place.
screw hp :|
About a month ago, i bought a 72.8gb 15krpm hp-branded cheetah 15k.3 drive from pcmark. The deal went smoothly and i got the well-packed drive quickly. I plugged it in, installed windows and transferred my data over. It worked great.
The next day, the drive wouldnt start properly. After a lot of testing, it seemed that the drive's heads were frozen in place. I froze the drive and it worked again for a few days. Then it happened again, so i froze it again. and it worked for almost a week this time. I decided that it was unacceptable and i called hp support. I was told that it was out of warranty on Dec 27 of 05, but i was in a grace period so they would let me return it anyway. However, they wanted me to get a hotswap cage and call back when i did. Apparently, you don't need a hotswap cage for the warranty to be valid, but you do need it if you want to return the hard drive.
So i talked to pcmark. He graciously gave me a hotswap cage for free and it arrived a few days later (the guy's a great trader, really, it's not his fault the drive died and he's been very helpfull and communicative the whole way).
It took a week for it to arrive and a few days for me to call hp.
......Rant:
I called hp on monday and was told that it was out of the grace period, and that they somehow lost their records of me calling and telling me to get a hotswap cage, then they'll rma it. The first guy i talked to did NOT record what he said and did NOT give me a case number. He effectively bought HP enough time to let the grace period lapse by telling me to get a hotswap cage. This behavior is really a devious way to screw someone out of an rma, but i guess it increases HP's profit margins. I've talked to about 10 different people at hp now, with EVERY SINGLE ONE of them telling me THE SAME THING. HP support is a bunch of trained monkeys, trained to screw you over. I really only recommend buying from hp when you KNOW they're losing money.
Deviously swindling a customer out of a return, especially on an enterprise level unit is a really poor thing to do for ANY company. I'd only expect this behavior out of a fly-by-night scam, not from such a large and well known place.
screw hp :|