Dear Mr Hurd,
While I realize you probably get hundreds, if not thousands of emails each day, I feel the need to point out what I consider to be a critical issue with the laptop repair facility. In order for you to understand how grave of an issue this is, I must give you some detailed background on my professional work experience with HP, some basic repair information I have learned from that experience and the history of the issue I have had with my laptop.
Before the last round of store closings (about six months before being sold to liquidators) I worked as a HP/Compaq certified technician for nearly nine years at CompUSA. I refurbished Compaq and HP computers in-store as per our agreements with each company. I torn down and repaired and restored HP and Compaq laptops and desktops countless times
At some point, as part of the repair process, when a motherboard (or hard drive in some instances) was replaced, a program called a tattoo began being used after such a replacement. The purpose of this was to brand the motherboard (or hard drive) with the model information so when a recovery was performed, the correct software was installed and unlicensed software could not be installed.
Herein lies the problem. My laptop, which was already replaced last year once, went in for repair four times. The first, nothing (and I can back this up) was actually done, although the notes say a restore was done. The second time, they fixed the main issue from the first time by replacing the motherboard, however a tattoo was not done. They also did run a recovery, but since it is not done the same as when a consumer does it, I ran a recovery from my HP provided recovery disks.
When I ran the recovery, HP's DVDPlay software was installed instead of HP's QuickPlay software. This is important because the built-in webcam is accessed using QuickPlay. The feature is not available with DVDPlay. I verified in the BIOS that the unit was not tattooed as the model was listed as a generic x123x#ABA instead of my model number.
I called tech support, and, since they have no idea what a tattoo is, had to explain this to them, and asked for a case manager to try to make sure what needed to be done was done.
The unit went in, I received it back with a restore. There was no note of a tattoo, but I doubt that is an option on the repair forms. I ran my own recovery to verify whether or not the unit was repaired. Since I was busy at work while running a recovery (which takes several hours), I don't recall if I shut the unit down, or it shut down on its own. I brought it home and, due to work being done on my apartment, was unable to use it for almost a week. When I tried to use it, it would not power up.
Third time in for repair and the motherboard was replaced again. I received it back, checked the BIOS, and found the model number was dv2570es - a Spanish model. This means my motherboard was likely repaired from a Spanish unit. I verified this by going to HP's web site and doing a product detect. Sure enough, it detected my laptop as the same Spanish model number. I have no problem with a refurbished motherboard, but when the people who repaired the motherboard failed to tattoo that board AND the people who placed it in my laptop ALSO failed to tattoo it, for at least the third time, that is scary.
What, however, is scarier, is that there may be hundreds of people out there that are in the same situation as myself and not even realize why. I have easily found a half-dozen or so people on your forums and on notebookforums.com.
The other problem is that since these people aren't aware of it, and your phone tech support people aren't aware of what a tattoo is, the issue goes undiagnosed. The user is told to run a recovery, or even worse sent to another website (http://quickplay.sourceforge.net/) that has a program called QuickPlay that has nothing to do with HP's QuickPlay.
I have been blogging about my experience and sharing that blog with as many people as I can so they know what the issue is, but until both HP's phone support people AND repair people get (re)trained on this issue, it is a disaster, and possibly even a lawsuit, waiting to happen.
While I eagerly await your response, I will admit that I have been checking out my legal options as well.
One more thing. Very often when I called and the case was "escalated," I was promised a call back within about 24 hours. Only about half the time, I received a call back. The most recent time, I have been dealing with Michelle Burrell who has gone above and beyond in terms of helping me, but she is limited by HP's policy. As an example, it is my understanding that Case Managers can't talk to the repair department AT ALL. While special cases should be few and far between, I think special cases would allow this. That type of policy may very well have prevented this email in the first place.
Please, take a few minutes and read this email. It really points out landmine that is just waiting to go off.
Thank you,
Sean A. Flesch
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