This story has run and run, far more than I ever expected. But this looks like final, final closure.

HP have agreed to refund my £138.95 Care Pack Warranty. It is clearly to their credit that they’ve seen sense in the end, admitted fault, apologised, and refunded my money. Click the letter to the right to read it in full.

What more can I ask at this point? I feel that they’ve done all they can, they’ve come through in the end, and I’m more than happy. I do love stories with happy endings.

When I last left the story, the laptop was to be picked up and fixed (again) by HP.

Over the course of the next few weeks, following lots of confusion with couriers and other problems, the laptop was finally returned. Sorted. Fixed.

At the end of the day, I suppose HP should be commended for fixing the problem in the end. It was, after all, a relatively old (3 years) laptop. But, at the same time, they knew that when they took the £138.65 off me to extend the warranty for a year – and offered me next-day service, which turned out to take much longer than one working day – indeed, more than a month.

Now that the event has passed, I’ve written to Stephen Gill, Managing Director of HP UK asking him for comment. I’ll update the blog again if I hear from him.

But, for now: Case closed.

Two-and-a-half weeks ago, I reported that my laptop problem had been solved. I blogged too soon.

As I covered (in excrutiating detail), I’m in a different place to the laptop as I’m back at uni. Luckily, my tech-friendly brother said he’d check the laptop over for me. He’s only just got round to testing it properly, and discovered that the laptop works so long as you don’t move it. The moment that you move the laptop, the power cuts. Not a great result for a laptop. So it would appear that it wasn’t properly fixed after all. It kinda seemed to good to be true.

Yesterday, he reported the fault to HP on my behalf. Now it seems unfair to add the interim period onto the time it’s taken HP to fix it, so I’m designating yesterday as ‘Day 25’. The sixteen days between the power cable being returned and the new fault being discovered have been discounted. That seems fair.

I’ll let you know how the repair progresses… though possibly without daily updates, because they’re becoming painful to write… and probably much moreso to read. Though if you have sadistic tendencies, you can subscribe to follow the on-going saga here. If you’re playing catch-up, there’s an introductory post here, and the first post on the subject at hand is here.

Take-home message: HP bad.

Success! The laptop cable has arrived, and the laptop is working! So HP have come through in the end.

I’m a student. I’d just like to underline that point. I’m a student. £138.65 is what the government think I should spend on books, food, entertainment, and basically anything that isn’t rent or fees for almost ten weeks; it’s about two-and-a-half weeks’ rent. To me, £138.65 is an awful lot of money. So when I spend £138.65 on a Next-Day On-Site Extended Warranty I expect decent service. I accept that parts are sometimes needed, and sometimes go out of stock, but it’s not unreasonable to expect the fault to be fixed within, say, a week, is it? Taking the better part of a month seems excessive.

Advice from other places has informed me that I shouldn’t have had to pay in the first place, as they should have agreed to pre-book a repair when the screen first broke, rather than insisting I send it straight away or have to buy the extended warranty.

I realise I’m a mere minnow in a sea of HP sharks, and that whatever I say means really very little to them – and even less to their bottom line. But my next laptop will be a Toshiba.

My friendly ‘service manager’ was overcome with apology today – apparently, the power lead for my laptop will be sent ‘as soon as one can be found’, and a meeting will be held to discuss the customer service I’ve received. Of course it will.

23 days, no usable laptop. Go Team HP!

Good news and bad, today.

A courier has dropped off my laptop this afternoon – result! However, they have failed to drop off the charger, so I can’t actually plug the laptop in to see whether or not it is working. So I have no idea whether it’s been successfully fixed or not.

It’s actually turning out quite comedic – a next-day on-site support package from a leading computer manufacturer taking four unsuccessful home visits and the best part of two weeks away from home to fix a laptop, then failing to return the power supply. Thank goodness my life will never depend on a repair from HP… Oh, wait…

Three weeks, now. No contact from HP today, and (of course) no laptop, despite the promises given on Monday.

Another update tomorrow, no doubt. Frankly, even in my least optimistic moments, I didn’t expect the repair to take this long, and I’m starting to get fed up with it clogging up the blog. But, amusingly, searching Google for HP Support Blog now has this site as the top result – just above, erm, HP’s support blog. If nothing else, that’s an achievement, and should help potential consumers to realise that their overpriced extended support warranties really do not seem to deliver.

Twenty days ago, I reported a fault on an HP laptop covered by an expensive next-day on-site service extended warranty. It still hasn’t been fixed. After four unsuccesful attempts to fix it on-site, the laptop was taken away to be fixed. It’s been away for eleven days, now. It was due back either today or tomorrow. It’s not here today, so I’m guessing it should be tomorrow.

We’ll see.

I’m back at medical school from today, so my ongoing HP repair is being handled by the rest of my family back home. I’m here with another laptop, since I have cases, presentations, and an e-portfolio, all of which require a computer – exactly the reason I paid for ‘Next Day’ HP support. 19 days later, I’m still waiting for a result.

Mum took a phone call today, informing me that ICM Computers were returning the laptop to HP for their attention. Presumably the parts they ordered last Wednesday didn’t fix the problem, but I’m not sure what’s happened since then. Apparently, the manager my mum spoke to commented that the laptop wasn’t in great condition, and had been bashed about a bit. There seems little to say about this, other than given that last time I saw the laptop, it was completely unfunctional (not to mention the disputed damage catalogued here), it would appear to have been ‘bashed about’ more in the last 19 days than previously.

The man said that my laptop would probably be back tomorrow or Wednesday. Because I’m back at uni, there’s some difficulty at getting a message about the return of the laptop through, because I’m obviously not available during office hours. But I think we’ve sorted a way round that. We’ll see.

All-in-all, it (hopefully) looks like this might finally be drawing to a close. But I’ve thought that before.

This isn’t the most riveting of posts, but I consider it to be quite important – even if, on days like these, I really wish I had a suitably qualified Grauniad-style independent editor to refer things to!

First of all, lawyers from The National Lottery have been in touch to insist that I remove their copyrighted logo from a post from a couple of months ago. I think I was probably on the right side of the law, having published in a reporting context something which was (or so it appeared) presented by The National Lottery. Their lawyers argue that the banner was a fake, and defamatory to their client. Unfortunately, I neglected to keep details of the original site to refer them to in order to confirm that the banner wasn’t faked, and so I complied with their request and removed the logo from the server, and replaced it with a description.

Next up, an ethical question from an independent party relating to my HP Support Blog: Why had I chosen to name individuals providing service, when my complaints were specifically with those individuals. That’s a fair comment, and there’s probably a potential for libel if the tone of the post is considered defamatory to the identified individual, so I’ve removed all references to names. That has meant editing a couple of comments, including one by an anonymous party, which I’m not overly comfortable in doing. However, I’ve clearly marked the changes in the comments, and pinged all of the edited posts. They are: Friday’s update, Monday’s update, Tuesday’s update, One week on, Day 13, and Day 14. The comments in question are here and here. For further clarification, I have also published this post on the HP Support Blog.

Finally, this post. Is it disrespectful and unfair? I think not. I have form on the issue of discussing religion: Witness this and this. I do not consider it part of my aim on this blog to protect religion, and certinaly not be protect one above another. Instead, I aim to be even-handed, and actually reflect my own views (this is, after all, a personal blog). If that means criticising actions of religious leaders that I find unacceptable, I shall do it, just as I would criticise the actions of any other community leaders. I’m not omnipotent, and hence can’t report every evil or every good performed by every relgious person – but I do blog the ones which catch my eye. Therefore, the post stands unedited.

As ever, you can complain about posts either publically via the commenting system, or privately via one of several methods: Email me, SMS or MMS “simon” followed by your message to 60300, leave me a voicemail on 0845 638 1916, or fax me on 0845 638 1918. Charges of phone calls and text messages appear along with full details of all contact methods in the site guide.