1/5

posted Aug-01-2010

HP sold defective units big time in 2009, not only desk tops but laptops too. There was a class action suit for the laptops and there is one for the desktops. HP couldn't make a computer that worked right if their life depended on it.

I had no idea HP had deteriorated to such an extent when I purchased my high end desktop with several upgrades. I purchased a Pavillion Elite e9180t which had a motherboard that was made by Asus which had incompatibility issues and they knew it when they sold it to me. They lied so many times in the process.

Since I had upgrades they had to build this unit and they didn't just put off the build date to wait about 2 months for the replacement mobo to show up.

I had called like 6 times to ask questions before I purchased and each time the sales persons told me that I should buy before 10-20 before Win7 comes out since there is no guarantee on the price of new OS after it is launched. If I buy before 10-20 it is loaded with Vista and I get apples to apples upgrade to Win7 for free. This was not true since a month after I bought it the entire upgraded unit I bought went down in price by $10.00! The sales staff was told to say this since this was told to me over and over by several folks there.

The unit showed up and I along with thousands of others found out immediately the mobos locked up and froze. You can google under lockups, freezes, hangs and you will find thousands of posts. There were more than one model of these that had these same problems.

They redirected all complaints to India customer support which is so bad that it was clear this tactic was a stall for HP while new Asus boards were on their way but never admitted to it. HP had phony fixes like bios update that dumped the mobo down which didn't help.

Corporate accounts were tracked much better than individual sales from the looks of it. I called and talked to several people there all getting the run around it was a nightmare for thousands of consumers.Some of the stories folks posted were much worse than mine and I was one of the lucky ones to get it fixed in two months.

I finally got them to ship me a new mobo and they had AT&T contracted out to come to my home to replace the mobo. By the way the mobo is so crowded it was amazing and I can see no upgrades are going to be possible. The tech was surprised at how tight everything was packed onto that board. It should be interesting how long the thing lasts.

I still have issues with the monitor not waking up and have to turn it off and then on which is another issue many had. Class action suit was filed 2-12-10 for selling inherently defective mobos.

I would never ever buy another HP product. I would never subject myself to the lies and poor customer service they provide. If I had it to do all over again I would have bought an Apple since Dell and others all operate this way from what I have discovered. Also HP only has a 17 day return policy. By the time they build the unit and it ships to you there is just a few days to determine what is wrong. I couldn't even return it by the time I figured out that it was not a software issue that could be fixed but hardware issue. HP was not honoring any returns and made folks wait for their fix. HP is a consumer bully big time. Also I would like to add that I found it timely that their year ends 10-30-09 so it was in their best interest to increase sales with whatever lies and to not show returns liabilities during the time I purchased. They were also in negociations for buying out another company too.

Dell and HP count on business to buy their throw away units and the individual consumer is really an after thought in the big picture with HP & Dell. After you factor in the price of MS software and office suite along with computer system, Apple is not really that over priced and out of the range plus they and MS can't tell you to leave them alone since the software is OEM either. This was critical in determining if the problem was software related or hardware related when trying to figure out why the units were not working. Consumers were turned away from both to get straight answers.

Apple has 80% customer satisfaction vs the others like HP and Dell who have a 60% customer satisfaction. I have been a PC person since my first computer in 1996 so it is a big deal for me to let go of PCs like this. But the good news is that Oracle just bought out Sun and is positioning itself to take on Dell and HP for the business market which means they may make better hardware with cheaper Linux software which will blow Dell & HP and others out of the water when it comes to price and quality. Cross your fingers this maybe be the end of the status quo of crappy expensive systems and software as we know it today.

The irony here for me was I thought if I bought an HP directly online from them I would get better pricing, better support and extras. In reality I was actually treated worse than if I had bought it as Costco since they have a 90 day return policy and HP gave me only 17 days. I could have gotten my money back and bought an Apple if I had bought it at Costco. So they treat their direct customers even worse.

HP direct held their customers captive until they could find a fix and wouldn't let them out of the deal for nothing. They lied to consumers about the issues and send them to India to spend hours & days & weeks & months trying all sorts of phony fixes to stall for time. I tried to return my unit and was told no.

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5/5

posted Aug-01-2010

One of the best online buys ever!

They were selling a Porter Cable 16" Omnijig for unbelieveable price of 299.00. No one came close.

Also Porter Cable was offering $50.00 rebate. So total cost of this unit was all of 249.00!!!

Their s&h for this 60lb unit was all of $6.50!

The box it shipped in was well thought out with thick styrofoam and the unit arrived in excellent shape.

I couldn't believe their pricing and shipping costs and called them before I ordered and they have been online since like 1990's and buy in truck loads from Porter Cable for many years and pass along the price break to customers.

I also found online that BBB rated them A+.

The unit arrived within the time period in excellent shape.

The rebate with Porter Cable is top notch and they even extended the rebate 2 weeks for me and even set up the account for the rebate before I sent them the UPC from the box and their form filled out. Porter Cable does a lot of rebates and has designated phone numbers just for them so they do it a lot and I would buy when those rebates are available. Everyone at Porter Cable was great.

I will never buy a tool for my husband again without checking out these guys first.

I recently shopped out nail guns with compressor and once again no one can beat Tools Plus and Porter Cable. They don't just sell Porter Cable either but it is a well respected manufacturer.

Tools Plus also states on their site that before they ship depending on the item they will open the box and put more packing materials in to prevent damage when necessary and that all items they sell are new. This company goes the extra mile and wants and cares about how the item get to you not all retailers do this unfortunately.

You will notice that others here give it 5 stars and they really earned it.

This review was modified by Trillium on August 01 2010 10:37:29 AM

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