I received a call from Tyson today. He is the case manager/supervisor that Mahmoud escalated the case to. He again asked for my credit card number and explained that they needed it because they had trouble with customers not returning the defective hard drive. I asked him how much would be charged if it was not returned and he said it could be few hundred dollars. I really don’t want to give my credit card to anyone but certainly not when I can’t even get a straight answer about how much I might be charged. I can certainly understand why people would be hesitant to return the defective hard drive since that is where all the files are in the first place. Why would HP want them back so much that they are threatening to charge me if I don’t return it. They have told me it is useless and that I can not get the files back so what are they going to do with it? “Fix” it and put it in some other fools computer? Who has access to the data on the hard drive if they do manage to get into it? Why won’t they offer an explanation?
Tyson never asked me what I was doing when the crash happened. Neither did anyone else for that matter. I this were my company I would want to know what people were doing before the product went kapoot so that I could figure out a way to prevent it from happening. This puzzles me that they weren’t interested in researching this.
Tyson was not outright rude to me though he said I wouldn’t give Mahmoud my card because I didn’t have a credit card or the available credit. Since I had not been told how much I might be charged this seemed more an intimidation that anything else. I explained that I worked from home and that the computer was my work. He said I don’t know anything about what you do( I had just explained in great detail what I did) but couldn’t see how that would affect me adversely. I don’t know if he wasn’t listening or didn’t care. He was unapologetic.
But, he said he would expedite the process by sending me a hard drive and a mother board since he thought that might be shot too. He did explain to me that he was more tech savvy than the people I talked to last night but he couldn’t remember how to get into safe mode at startup. He did less trouble shooting than the other two but told me to keep trying to start Windows in the event it (Windows?) let me in so I could retrieve the files. He told me not to choose the recovery option as I would for sure lose my files. He said if I were him I should not try that. I had at this point accepted that the files were gone but wanted to use the damn computer sooner than Monday afternoon when a tech is scheduled to come to my house to install the new hard drive and take with him the old one. Talk about trusting your customers.
I told him I was not happy with this resolution. I said the computer is only four months old and I would like them to simply send me a new one. Overnight please. He said that would have been an option if the computer had crashed within the first 21 days of purchase and I was obviously well beyond 21 days. Not even a month! I then asked for the name and number of his supervisor or someone else who could help me. He said there was no one above him. I questioned him on that and he replied that indeed there were other people higher up in the company but they could not be bothered with something like this as they were so busy running the company. He would not give me a name or number.
He wrapped it up by asking if there was anything else he could do for me and to thank me for choosing HP.
I’m not trying to be difficult but if this had been a car the dealership would repair it and give me a loaner. I have a Tahoe that I bought 10 years ago and I bought it used already 2 years old. It still runs great and it looks great. Obviously the car cost considerably more than this computer but I only got 4 months out of the thing and I lost all my data. And there is confusion as to whether or not it can be retrieved but they won’t even try.
Feh.