I am the not-so-proud purchaser of an HP Pavillion notebook that HP refuses to cover under warranty due to alleged mold contamination. You heard me right - they claim there's mold inside the computer and that repairing it would be a health hazard for their technicians. How mold can grow inside a computer is a mystery to me, since mold can't ingest plastic or metal to my knowledge.
Now, I can't find any mold contamination at all - not on the hard drive, not on the battery, not on the memory modules, not on the CD/DVD drive, not on the keyboard, not on the LCD, not on any boards visible to me through the back of the unit. Nada. To make matters worse, HP won't provide me any evidence of this alleged mold, like photos. They claim they saw it and that's that.
The HP technician in Tennessee (the warranty repair center) told me that they would fix the computer if I had it professionally decontaminated with documents certifying that the decontamination was done. I spoke to both Firedog and Geek Squad - they don't offer anything like this.in fact, the Firedog guys literally laughed at me when I told them the story and they told me that HP was screwing with me. I can't find any mold decontamination services for computer equipment online. Not to mention I am suspicious that one can't decontaminate a computer without damaging it, giving HP yet another excuse to refuse to honor the warranty.
I filed a consumer protection complaint with the State of New Jersey. Haven't heard back from them yet.
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