Looked great but defective. Bad service to boot

Author's Rating:

Pros: The screen looked great. It was fairly light and compact

Cons: Terrible customer service. Laptop was sent from the factory without being set up.

The Bottom Line: 
Don't buy an HP. The customer support is the worst and they seem to have a problem with quality.

Author's Review
I will have to admit my bad review doesn't have to do with the normal performance parameters of the laptop. There is not a customer support rating on this site or I would give that a 1 (zero if I could). I received a unit that had not been set up properly in production.

Upon booting I would get a window that said something about factory settings. I closed it and continued to play with the laptop and was fairly happy with the little that I played with it. I then called "customer support" to figure out why I kept getting that factory window.

After fighting my way through the automated menus I finally got to speak to someone in India who spoke passable English and explained the situation. I then got sent to DESKTOP tech support in the US. They then sent me back to the India tech support pool who then sent me back to the US laptop tech support. After giving them all of my information and explaining the situation for the forth time they told me I was out of luck, as per my suspicions, the laptop had not been set up properly in the factory and it would have to go back.

I also have a Compaq laptop that recently had problems and had to be sent in. The heatsink apparently had come loose from the processor. It apparently is a common problem and in my opinion should be covered even if the laptop is not under warranty. Anyway, the tech support people did not have any record of the three year warranty I had purchased. I got such a runaround at the tech support in India that I finally got fed up. I hung up and looked up the US headquarters phone number to complain. Within 10 minutes a box was on the way and my laptop was going to be repaired.

HP tech support is terrible for anything more than the average problems. After having a Compaq and then an HP both with manufacturing problems I am considering other options. I had been a very loyal Compaq customer. I still have a 486 laptop that I was thrilled with. I used tech support three times for that and the people back then spoke clear English and I didn't get any runaround. That experience was the reason that I continued to buy Compaq/HP. I don't know if I ever will again.