In 2007 I purchased an off the shelf everyday retail type HP laptop for my "personal use" that had been on display and a HP color laser copier from Staples in Maple Ridge, BC.
I had problems with both.
First the computer.
Because I purchased an off the shelf laptop that had been on display I also purchased the Staples 3 yr extended warranty and basically ended up paying the same price as a new unit without the Staples 3yr Extended Warranty.
Trouble started immediately... the computer crashed, locked up, done, game over.
Took it back to the resident Staples "computer expert" who reloaded the operating system... I immediately asked if the "hard drive" was okay.
He said all the trouble was windows software related.
What complicated this matter is HP archaic system of loading the operating system and all other programs from a partitioned D drive. Question is "What if the hard drive dies??? " Every time this has to be reloaded and reformatted onto the C drive will take 3 hrs loading and another 3 hrs removing all the advertising and incredible number of bizarre pop-ups and whiz bangs HP includes with and for other companies - who knows how much info is being sent off from these laptops to companies involved in this bizarre set of software.
anyways, this "crash" happens another 3 times. In the meantime I have data and email that's being lost every time this crashes.
Because of this I also was forced to purchase an external hard drive and now only store data/email externally...
Another issue that arose through all of this was that windows had just gone from xp to vista and had discontinued any sales of xp.
I was thinking about purchasing my own version of xp and deleting all that HP stuff on the "d" drive... because the Staple expert kept me thinking it was a MS software problem.
Each time the Staples computer expert reloads the system and says its a "windows xp" problem and I pay anywhere from $60 - $120 dollars for his time.
Keep in mind the Staples warranty doesn't cover anything related to software. I missed that... I thought Id be getting bumper to bumper coverage but instead got rear bumper to middle of the car coverage.
Well finally after the 4th crash I call HP service directly. I'm getting really frustrated, keep in mind the time to reload and the data I'm losing every time and also the Staples technical fees.
The HP service tech immediately has me run a simple hard drive test... well wouldn't you guess it, there were corrupted sectors on the internal C drive and also on the D drive partition... so I'm screwed before I even open the box. HP couriered a new hard drive to me, I pop it in and voila the laptop works... however I still have to spend 4-6 hrs loading the operating system from D drive to C drive and so on and so forth... but oh well it works.
I return to staples and explain to them what has been going on and that the HP laptop has been fixed. The resident computer expert at Staples never checked the hard drive and kept charging for "software" repairs. The store manager basically told me to take a flying you know what... I was in shock. The store manager and his techy are still convinced the problem is software.
The staple warranty should have taken care of the hardware problem... well I ended up paying an extra $300 bucks for staples computer expert to repair "software" The extended warranty cost $300 - at the end of the day $700 bucks was tacked onto the cost of the great deal-off the shelf HP computer. The lost data and my time could easily be worth another $1000.
Conclusion:
Staples Maple Ridge is not qualified to sell electronics and should stick to "Staples" and paper stuff. HP should provide their software on disks separate from their hardware - just like DELL.
FYI - I gave the laptop away. Since then it worked for about 1.5 yrs and then died... I'm sure the Staples managers and their sales staff are laughing everyday retail customers walk out the door proudly carrying their latest piece of electronic
FYI - You never know who you are screwing when you do this. I'll stay with Dell from now on thank you very much. When it arrived, I loaded the operating system from the windows "xp" disks provided (not vista) and was downloading my email in less than 15 minutes. Never have tried out the Dell extended 3yr service and warranty I purchased.
As it turns out, this experience with Staples / HP laptop was my personal experiment with something other than a Dell which we had already been using for several years and was instrumental in my company purchasing 50 more laptops in the next year... they didn't come from Staples and they weren't HP's. Staples lost sales equaled $80k in hardware, 25K in software and another 25k in peripherals = total loss $130k - WOW!
I wonder how much they lose in sales nation wide???
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