HP/Compaq wants $94 + SHIPPING for restoration cds!!!

[farrow099]

So the harddrive died on one of my laptops, I picked up a new 60gb from newegg for $65 shipped and proceded to call Compaq for a copy of the restoration discs; As they currenlty install all your backups on the harddrive...

After giving all my info for 20 minutes I am quoted $108!!!

After asking why so much, they said because it is a notebook.... At that point, i hung up! I called back and spoke to someone else today and was told the same thing... That is ridiculous. I can get a brand new windows copy/liscense for less!

 

[Hunterkiller5150]

I would call back and ask to speak to a manager, be calm about it (I use to be in the Geek Squad, the nicer the customer, the more we helped them out) and ask him why so much for restoration cd's. I have never head about $94 restoration cd's. Something doesn't sound right.

 

[farrow099]

I was very cordial right up until he said $108! lol

Even when I called back earlier today, I was polite, perhaps a bit aggetated... But polite. They told me flat out that the desktop restoration cds go for $20 and the notebook restoration cds go for $94. I asked if I was purchasing a new Windows liscense and they said no...

So I asked what I was paying so much for and they told me its more expensive for the notebook restoration discs - which didn't get me any closer to an answer, lol.

Obviously they had no idea why there is such a price difference either. I thanked her and hung up.

Soon as I got off the phone I installed my own software with a few notorious hacks - they can suck it :lol: I won't ever be buying a compaq/hp again

I have a Fujitsu Lifebook permanently mounted in the trunk of my car (touchscreen in the dash) that I've been VERY pleased with

 

[killernotebooks]

Wow, they have these disks set up on images on a server, and this is about a 7 minute job of which 6 of it is unattended! Add the cost of 2 CD's (like twenty cents, and shipping $14.99 U.S. mail priority overnight flat rate envelope)

I just had a customer that got a virus or something and his drive was toast. I said I could send him recovery CD's and software for free (like Priority mail costs about 5 bucks, he'd get it in 2-3 days). He wanted it right away and volunteered to pay for overnight shipping.

Even though it is not "specifically" a warranty issue, your customer is out a product you supplied and should definately fall into the No B.S. Warranty category.

 

[Morvegil]

Im buying a Killer notebook, this is good support!

 

[schwinn]

Not totally related to this exact issue, but...

I recently had a customer with a Compaq desktop that originally shipped with a 60GB drive. Long story short, he had to pay $30 for the recovery CDs, which don't even work with the new 250GB drive (it was on sale). The reason? Their restore CDs installed XP SP0, which didn't support large drives. Since it's not an "install" CD, I can't slipstream SP2 into it. On top of it all, Compaq refuses to do anything about this.

Some of the lies that Compaq presented:
- The motherboard will not support that large of a drive
- The QuickRestore CD is not recognizing the full size of the drive
- They cannot patch the original Quick Restore CD because this would be a violation of their license with MS
- If they were to patch the Quick Restore, it would "convert the OEM CD to a Retail version" which would also violate the MS license
- They would not send any of the software separately, because they cannot send me another license for the software.

Needless to say, they are idiots. No wonder the "laptop" CD costs more... because it's better, right?

Don't get me wrong, I am not simply Compaq-bashing, they are simply the latest idiots I have had to deal with. I have had similar dealings with HP, Gateway, IBM, Sony, Dell, etc. They're all idiots.

Sorry for the rant...

Bottom line is that you have no choice but to buy their CDs. Honestly, if you have a COA sticker that says "OEM" on it, I would recommend "obtaining" a suitable CD for XP or whatever it is, and installing it yourself.

Lastly, this installation of recovery on the HD means that you need to burn CDs to get your own recovery disks. By creating this loophole, they eliminate the need to send you a CD... so you could ask, why didn't you burn your CDs? At least, that's their argument.

 

[pswenne]

I totaly agree with you, buy a new retail version of XP. It's gonna be around the same price and you won't have all the additional program running in the background

Someone I know bought a laptop from Toshiba not long ago and he was complaining about his computer being slow. Now he has a 2ghz core duo with 1gb of ram so it not normal.

I checked the task manager and I counted 35 running program under his account name. more than haft of them were from Toshiba. He had more than 400mb of ram used AT START-UP.

So if you know how to use a computer and you can figure out where to get the "special" driver... get yourself a retail version of XP and throw away the recovery disk ASAP

 

[killernotebooks]

If you are going to go that way, and since you have a license you could get a "backup copy" for a lot cheaper than retail.

 

[Bluagave]

Can you tell me how you did the hacks to recover your system without buying those dang cd's from HP. I'm having the same problem with those guys. I'll never buy another HP... Terrible customer service! :x