Buyers Beware!
I’ve now purchased 3 Hewlett Packard laptops over a 2 year period and will never purchase another HP product again!

The first laptop became excessively hot to touch and by the 6 month mark would give me small electrical shocks!!! It was dead by the 12 month mark. Putting this down to just bad luck and naively continuing to think they’re a good brand - I purchased another two HP laptops for my partner and myself. His laptop had constant startup problems from the 4 week mark onwards and the DVD player and hard drive needed replacement at the 5 month mark.

My system at the 4 month mark started to feel very hot to touch (even after 5 mins of being switched on) and by the 5 month mark became sluggish, slow to start up and often froze. At the 7 month mark it completely failed and had to be sent for warranty repairs where the hard drive needed replacing as did 3 other parts.

It when you get to the HP support side of things that your real HP experience begins where their promise of a 7-10 day repair turn around really means in excess of 37 days.

During this time I: made 39 telephone calls to them that I paid for; lost 5 work days while I waited for them to turn up at a time that they made with me to collect/return my laptop where they didn’t turn up at all or call to advise of a change of plan and I had joy of talking to at least 12 different people in their South African service and complaints areas and their UK logistics and repair centre not to mention I also got to speak to people in their courier company. I was hung up on 5 occasions; promised to be called on 6 occasions and then not called; and contacted on 5 occasions from people in different departments to be asked the same question that the previous people who called 3, 5 and 14 days earlier had asked.

I had to lobby one incompetent telephone operator who insisted on telling me that my product isn’t under warranty even though it was already established that it was only 7 months old and is under warranty and as she felt she was right and it was a closed matter - inferred I was lying and hung up on me. It was only after managed to get to a complaints area that I received a verbal apology and told she was reading the wrong date.

On top of this as the complaints area is based in Capetown South Africa no one has the ability to provide any service or care or have the ability to influence UK-based operations whatsoever - nor can you get escalated to someone who does as the people you speak to are only authorised to send an email to state your case to ‘Head Office’ and point blank refuse to escalate you to a senior member of staff! Oh and the token external hard disk that was offered in compensation for my troubles, costs and lost time – was never sent to me.

So if you can afford to waste an excess of time and money which equates to a value of at least 2.5 times your original laptop price, enjoy spending hours resetting up your laptop and love the thrill of living on the edge of not knowing whether your precious data is safe as its on a HP product that is bound to fail, then go right ahead – otherwise BEWARE.

My advice is to search the laptop performance review sites - I wish I had - apparently 1 in 4 HP laptops are lemons with HP being the most unreliable of a pick of 7 brands reviewed in terms of their hardware reliability.

And if you are still keen on a HP product, then just know that it is likely you will get no support from HP should you need it (and you will) as central to everything HP do is a bungling incompetent culture that fails to live up to any HP CARE promise.

Please value your sanity, your time and your wallet - just don’t buy Hewlett Packard.