I Am Fairly Computer Literate...

 ... as they say. So, when my newly purchased refurbished HP ZBook G6 went on the fritz, I tried to fix it by doing a system restore to its earliest restore point. That failed a few to several times and I tried a complete reset of Windows 10. Thing is it told me I needed to insert the media with the recovery info on it, I thought I was screwed because I forgot to make a recovery drive. Normally you do not need a recovery drive, Windows 10 will reinitialize itself from files stored in the computer but not this time. So I tried to make a recovery drive - no dice. It told me files were missing. Oh shit I thought. Now normally I'd have thought, no problem I'll call warranty service and yes I had paid extra for a 3 year warranty. 

The thing about the warranty - or lack of it - was that earlier in the day before the laptop going on the fritz, I had tried to register my warranty. When I checked the warranty there was a link to contact info for warranty service on it; I went to that link and found there was contact info for service and to register the warranty. I called to register the warranty. The HP rep had a heavy accent I had heard many times over the years I worked for the U.S. Custom Service Office of Investigations and my bet was he was in a South American nation like Colombia or at least from there. His name was Carlos. Carlos told me I had called the wrong number and got the one for consumer warranties and not for Care Packs (as Barney Fife would have said: what's the diff). He then said he'd give me the correct number, guess what number he gave me. It was the exact same number I had just called to get him - I thought 'oh boy here we go' . After awhile of nincompoopish conversation (on his part) I asked to speak to a supervisor. He put me through to customer service where Lisa got on the phone. She introduced herself as a supervisor. 

Lisa asked me for all the info about what was going on. She told me she could not help me because she was not allowed to run the serial number (a supervisor - I doubt it). She then said she would put me through to Care Pack Registration and did so. I first asked her for their number should we be disconnected and she said she did not have it but only had an internal code to connect to them (yeah right)! Anyway, she put me through and it connected. I figure I had been on the phone maybe 10 to 12 minutes by then.

I was on hold again and about another 10 minutes went by with me on hold but finally a lady who did not give me her name got on the line saying she was with Care Pack Registration. She asked me everything about the laptop and the warranty such as my customer number, the model number and description of the laptop, the serial number of the laptop and the numbers for the Care Pack. When I read her the description of the laptop, reading exactly what HP put on the Care Pack warranty as the machine being warrantied, she said something to the effect of: 'I have that all here on the screen, your Care Pack has already been registered'. I thought great. Then she went 'hmm, did you say it is a refurbished system'? I said yes. Then she dropped the HP-bomb by saying: 'HP does not in any way warranty refurbished laptops'. She then told me, in no uncertain terms: 'HP absolutely will not honor this warranty'. My head was almost to the exploding point but I remained polite and asked her how could it have been offered to me and how could HP have taken my $300.00 payment for it for three years, and how could they send the warranty to me with the fact it is a refurbished machine included on the warranty paperwork and then not how is it they would not honor the warranty! 

She then asked me to hold on. I am guessing that by that point I had been on the phone for 20 to 25 minutes. I was getting edgy but promised myself to remain nice because if I let go of that restraint I can get stupidly nasty. It did not matter that I had restrained myself because at 38 minutes and 30 seconds into my phone call, I was disconnected. Do you think the woman who did not give me her name had the courtesy to call me back? After all, she had all my customer info, including my contact phone number in the HP system and I had given her my customer ID so she could have easily looked it up but, of course, she did not call me.

So, I wrote an email to the salesman asking him about the warranty. After that, I watched some TV and later on I got on the laptop and fiddled around. They it went on the fritz. Either I screwed something up or the computer screwed up but it does not matter which because either way it would have been covered by the warranty. What mattered was maybe they really would not honor the warranty; so, I did not bother calling them because had they told me 'no way Jose' I would have exploded in a litany of nastiness. I waited for the salesman to get back to me to first assure me I had a good warranty.

Later that day, I got a reply from the salesman. His reply was an email asking 'when is the best time for me to call you'. I replied that I wanted a written reply in an email so I would have a written record of whether or not HP would honor the warranty and I told him because of my mood it was probably best if I did not talk to anyone about it further that day because I was pissed off big time. I then forwarded the email I had sent to him to a gal at HP who doles out RMA's for returns and told her her I'd be returning the laptop. She replied same day and sent me the RMA telling me she fully understood why I wanted to return it. Next day, no contact from the salesman. Today, day three, no contact from the salesman. I will call him on Monday but first I am going to send him another email.

Since the laptop went on the fritz, I figured out how to do a complete reset Windows 10 and start fresh. I do not know why but it must have been my third or fourth attempt and I was able to make a recovery drive. How it could make the recovery drive but not do the reset from files on the laptop with the recovery drive is beyond me. Only thing I can think is that I ran a Windows update in between that last attempt and the one prior to it and maybe that put the missing files back into place. It seems to have worked so maybe I do not need warranty service but I still want the warranty to be honored. If I am told something like: 'whoopsie we made a mistake, no warranties on refurbished machines, I may have to break my vow to myself never to purchase another Dell and look to them for a different laptop. It's been probably last two laptops, not including this latest one, have been HP's. 

All this made my head spin. I hate dealing with leftists and you probably safely bet that those working for HP & Dell are almost al lefties.

All the best,
Glenn B