I just had an unfortunate experience with HP Support that everyone would be well advised to consider before buying from HP.
My 11 year old son's hp dv2000z screen recently went into a permanently dim state - apparently the internal lid actuator that tells the system when the lid is closed has malfunctioned.in addition to the lack of backlight, the touchpad mouse and media buttons no longer work. The laptop is now unusable.
The malfunction occurred sometime between July 1 and July 5 I'm in holiday mode so I'm not even turning on the laptop. I chat with HP web support on the 8th and discover that the warranty had expired on the 3rd. As you can imagine they refused to do anything except suggest I accept their offer to repair it for $600. I called their support number on the 9th but received the same reply with a complementary helping of bad attitude.
The actuator is deep inside the laptop it's NOT one of those little pieces of plastic that stick out and could possibly be directly damaged. This has obviously been heading towards a failure for some time and from HP's perspective the timing could not have been better.
Apparently I'm not alone in thinking that their service is terrible; Google returns 1.5 million hits for the combination: hp service terrible. I've had reasonable success getting past no with most other vendors support services but HP has been a solid wall of NO.
Legally they may be on solid footing but from a customer service and satisfaction perspective HP is pursuing a deeply flawed strategy. Product failures the day after the warranty expires should be seen as an embarrassment to any quality focused company.
The fact that HP chooses to do nothing about this tells you more than anything else I can say about what kind of company they are and how they will treat you.
HP failed my son and I when we needed them the most and we recommend that you stop buying their products.
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