Compaq-HP support

[Simon]

Good day,

I had a Compaq laptop of PII model (I don’t remember the model, it’s been a year) in witch the keyboard controller broke down and the laptop couldn’t boot. So I brought it to Compaq Israel the only place that had parts for this laptop and the price offer for the controller I got was 950$!!!! witch is more then a new laptop one of that type costs !!!!!!!! (I believe they didn’t wanted to fix it in the fist place so they gave me this price offer). I refused to fix it for that price and since I couldn’t take it to another place. So Compaq Israel offered to buy the laptop from me for 100$!!!!!!!!!!!!! And since I had no other choice I agreed with once condition I keep my hard disk. A year had passed since then till today they claim they “lost” my hard disk or so they say and I didn’t see the 100$ or even a dollar it in the mail just wait !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am a M.Sc. in Electronic Eng. In past I was a system Admin. in the Army with 1000 end units under my control. I have worked with Compaq support in past and as far as I am concerned it’s the worst company to get support from and I never recommended buying anything from Compaq. I don’t think that after these years you will change I just build this morning after another iteration with you and decided to write this letter.

Since then I bougth another laptop from Toshiba and these days I am looking for another one and it deffenetly would not be a Compaq ( Compaq-HP as you call it today).

Sincerely,
Simon Cooper

[Dave Hicks]

Quote:

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I don’t think that after these years you will change I just build this morning after another iteration with you and decided to write this letter.

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I don’t know if you realize this but “you” (“us”) is a bunch of users, fans, and collectors of HP calculators - mostly older ones. This is not an HP/Compaq corporate site. There are HP employees who read this forum but not in an official capacity.

I understand your annoyance, but the problem you’re describing is quite common to modern electronic devices. Because they aren’t all that repairable, the $950 quote was probably for an entire new main board or maybe even a replacement laptop. Of course, the replacement was most likely built and stored back when they made yours, which means it has a terrible price/performance ratio in comparison to anything new. Which of course causes people to take this “opportunity” to upgrade to the new/better machine which discourages manufacturers from going out of their way to make things more repairable - especially anything that would increase the price or weight of a laptop.

If you have a similar problem in the future, here are a couple of ideas: Look for a “laptop repairman” who might be able to fix just the keyboard controller. We have some freelance calculator repairmen who hang around this forum who can work miracles on calculators that HP doesn’t try to repair. I assume there are similar people for laptops.

Another option is to find another dead one (should be easy - laptops live hard lives) and buy it for the same $100 that Compaq offered you and swap parts.