Backstory: I work my ass off. I like to have nice things, so I have to work quite a bit. I have nice instruments, a nice amp and a nice car. I also wanted a nice laptop. I settled on a HP HDX18t with a few modifications. My grand total was $1,519.18. I had the money, so I didn't worry about getting it.

I was wrong.

The maximum I can charge to my debit card is $1,000 per day, which was a problem. A HP representative (over the phone) suggested I purchase online gift cards for myself over a few days to reach the grand total without hitting my maximum spending limit. So i started with $900 in gift cards this evening.

HP responded with several phone calls, as did my bank. My bank denied the transactions and froze my account for 3 days because they believed my card was stolen. I broke HP policy by purchasing myself gift cards, as well as using a stolen credit card. I am now not eligible for any of the deals and rebates I am counting on which set my grand total well over $2,000. It is somewhat my fault as well, as I should have seen this coming but I have spent close to a thousand dollars online before with no problems. What should I do, and how do I buy a laptop online form a company?

TL;DR: HP ********d me over, but it isn't totally their fault. How do I buy a laptop online form a company?

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Did you get the name of the representative that told you to do this? I would call HP back and ask for a supervisor, then explain what happened and mention names. Also do whatever you can to explain it to the bank, and let them know what you're doing for the next time.

If HP still doesn't help try the old "this is ridiculous, I will never use or purchase your products and tell my friends to do the same" and see what they'll offer you then.

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ThrillNetwork Moderator
The user formerly known as WildeFyre
UOIT Mechanical Engineering Student

My dad does this all the time with various companies and we get all kinds of good deals. It works.

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I know Dell allows you to use a debit card and charge $xxx per day. But, given the circumstances, I don't know if HP will work with you now cuz they'll be worried about fraud. That and other reasons is why I don't do business with HP anymore.

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ThrillNetwork Webmaster/Systems Administrator -- My Official Fansite -- Get Firefox!
Everytime I ride a coaster, it valleys. I've never been on a stalled coaster or had one roll back (except Wicked Twister and what was Superman: Ultimate Escape, which does that by design).

After my horrible experience with Dell and the 2 month ordeal it took to correct my laptop problem, I will never buy one online again.

As far as your circumstance, your bank should have unfreezed the account by now and you should be able to get a refund on the one gift card, I'm assuming. If not I think your bank can dispute the charge and reverse the charge.

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Intimidator Coming in 2010 to Carowinds!

^^ I've had problems with dell before, and the HP I found seemed a lot nicer than the similarly priced Dell.

I called my bank and unfroze my account. Since the gift cards never went through, I'm cutting to my aunt and she's going to use her American Express. HP was quick to apologize and gave me free 2-day shipping with $100 off in addition to all the discounts I had before (thanks to Ryan F- also, I DID let my bank know ahead of time.)

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I wouldn't get an HP because my 'old" laptop was a lemon, I told them they made lemons since literally everyone I knew with my model line had the same issue, then tried to make me look and feel like an ass, just to send out an e-mail stating what I told them a week later. After sending my computer to Houston 4 times in two years, and them replacing it once, I said "screw them" and got a Gateway.

Your whole mess sounds like one of their phone rep stunts. They're all a bunch of clueless people who are good for nothing. I can't stand them anymore.

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I couldn't stand Dell because all of their tech support was in India.

They were more tolerable to understand than most, but it still pisses me off that they have moved all tech support overseas for a company started in the basement of an American.

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Intimidator Coming in 2010 to Carowinds!

^I have an 8400 and in the 4 years it was covered I've had the motherboard fry 7 times... SEVEN! They replaced it every time, sending me a whole new tower once. I over-clocked it as soon as my coverage was up though and for the past year and a half I've had no problems.

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The motherboard fried twice on my dv2000us series laptops, and the hard drive died the other two times. I thought the desktops were better since my ex had one literally fly over a car and still work for years, but if you had one fry a motherboard 7 times...I don't know...

What I do know is that they lost me and her as customers, as well as a few other people in my circle.

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It's a Dell 8400, purchased in July of 2004. It was plagued with problems, then last July I added a new, larger fan, more ram and over-clocked it, with no troubles... yet.

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Anything in the dv series laptops are lemons. I've seen issues with dv9000 and dv6000 laptops as well.

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ThrillNetwork Webmaster/Systems Administrator -- My Official Fansite -- Get Firefox!
Everytime I ride a coaster, it valleys. I've never been on a stalled coaster or had one roll back (except Wicked Twister and what was Superman: Ultimate Escape, which does that by design).

I had a Dell desktop. 8400, I believe as well. SUCKED DONKEY BALLS.

I ran that sucker because it's all I had for 2 years. Constant power source problems. OS crapped out. Never had a mother board problem, strangely enough, but consistently had to replace the power supply nearly three times a year. Tried upgrading the RAM to 3 gigs from 1.5, didn't do squat.

I avoid Dells at all cost. My sister had the same desktop and experienced a myriad of problems as well. Dealt well with the Customer Service actually, distinctly remembered they spoke in an American accent (didn't seem outsourced?) however it was not cool to have to call them at least twice a semester asking why my power source was out again. Two of my past three room mates in college have had Dell laptops, and have encountered problems as well. One had to have his laptop replaced several times, sent in and everything. Once, it essentially blew up. There were black char marks on parts of the laptop. Insane. The other is experiencing OS errors, not sure if that's Dell's fault though.

I also have a Toshiba Satellite laptop for portable uses (class, photography, video, presentation, etc.) and it's 'okay.' Not enough RAM to run the things I need (video, photog, etc.) effectively so I had to upgrade, but it can't go beyond 3gb. Major flaw. Screen is dim, as well even at brightest setting, but it works.

Now running an HP Desktop. Very pleased. No hardware, software, memory problems whatsoever. *knocks on wood*

@epijlh: Sorry to hear about all the bank, financial deal. That's rather annoying. Check out different companies' clearance sections. Research the laptops through Amazon, CNet, Google via reviews and stuff. I was able to get my new HP Desktop at $315 because it was a clearance sale to make room for the newer models. A lot of the times electronic stores will do this to have room to showcase the new stuff.

Also, try to see if the companies have Twitter, Facebook or some other social network. It's becoming more and more common that they'll offer great discounts or deals through these channels to their audience, and you can find some nice catches. Also find out if they have a college student discount. Apple, Sony do, I'm sure others do. Find a laptop that perfectly fits your needs: memory-wise, storage, capabilities (outputs, CD/DVD periphs, screen, input.) and you'll be set. Play whatever cards you need, any electronic company in the market need sales right now and they all want your money.

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ThrillNetwork Editor (past tense: lectricShark)
Never forget justice is what love looks like in public. -- OXFAM

Your "can't upgrade beyond 3GB" sounds as if you're running a 32-bit OS. You need a 64-bit OS to get it beyond 3GB.

OS issues are very rarely the fault of the manufacturer. It's either a program you installed, a driver issue (where an update is available), or a combination of things.

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ThrillNetwork Webmaster/Systems Administrator -- My Official Fansite -- Get Firefox!
Everytime I ride a coaster, it valleys. I've never been on a stalled coaster or had one roll back (except Wicked Twister and what was Superman: Ultimate Escape, which does that by design).

@Steven Correct. My bad. Faulty programs were most likely responsible for my OS failures. Either way, I'd advise avoiding Dell, if possible. And I am running 32-bit, actually now that I thnk about it. I wish I could get more than 3 gigs of RAM in that case. Steven, what do you run?

Also, can anyone recommend me an external hard drive? I've had a SeaGate ,and I'm not happy with it. I'm looking at getting a LaCie, but I'm not sure.

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ThrillNetwork Editor (past tense: lectricShark)
Never forget justice is what love looks like in public. -- OXFAM

LaCie sucks big time. They use the cheapest of the cheap and have a high failure rate. You're better off sticking with Seagate. Western Digital is also good.

I have Vista Home Premium on a Dell Inspiron desktop. It has 4GB, but I found it was cheaper just to get the 4GB ahead of time, and when I update it to Windows 7, it'll be the 64-bit version. The only issue I've had with that was a DVDRW drive fail to burn DVDs. That was a blessing in disguise, however, since I could put in the drive I wanted (hint: stay away from Sony Optiarc drives). I replaced it with a faster LiteOn DVDRW with Lightscribe. I've rarely had LiteOn drives fail.

I also have a 4.5 year old Dell Insprion 600m laptop with 1GB RAM and XP Pro for work. I've had 2 hard drives fail in the laptop, mostly because of the abuse, and an OS issue that required a reload.

My experience with laptops is that there's no clear winner in terms of reliability. However, serviceability is another big thing. Sony's, Apples, and some Toshiba's are among the worst.

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ThrillNetwork Webmaster/Systems Administrator -- My Official Fansite -- Get Firefox!
Everytime I ride a coaster, it valleys. I've never been on a stalled coaster or had one roll back (except Wicked Twister and what was Superman: Ultimate Escape, which does that by design).

Ah, ok. I thought it was an HP line that I wasn't familiar with. Everyone I knew in college who had a Dell hated it, and I usually ended up fixing some strange software issue that was caused by Dell bloatware. One of my college buddies hated his so much that he literally was planning to shoot it with a shotgun after replacing it. I should ask him if he ever did, lol.

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^ Dell bloatware? If you want to see a prime example of bloatware, look at HP drivers.

Attached is the brand reliability for all laptop manufacturers from Consumer Reports. The higher the number, the worse the reliability is. Anything less than 3 points between brands isn't meaningful... meaning the survey has a sample error of +/- 3 points. In other words, they're all about the same, except for HP.



So, what you experience actually is very empirical in terms of reliability concerning Dells. To flip it around, I've had people who were IBM/Lenovo purists, but had nothing but issues with them. They started to switch to Dells, and the problems seem to go away. The fact of the matter is you're going to have some sort of problem with a laptop because they tend to take more abuse than a desktop would.

Attached Thumbnails

 

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ThrillNetwork Webmaster/Systems Administrator -- My Official Fansite -- Get Firefox!
Everytime I ride a coaster, it valleys. I've never been on a stalled coaster or had one roll back (except Wicked Twister and what was Superman: Ultimate Escape, which does that by design).

I definitely agree that HP is THE WORST with bloatware. I had so much crap to clean out first thing with this that I didn't have with my Medion, nor my Gateway. My Medion was a super-trooper. Took 3 years of college abuse and only got replaced because 1. Vista was out and it could barely run basic 2. I couldn't get a new battery for it and I couldn't get it to last a whole class anymore. This Gateway I have now is pretty awesome.

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Hp has problems with the dv and tx series and denies all of them because the average life before failure is 14 months. 2 months beyond their warranty. Therefore the consumer is at fault and must pay to fix it.

I had less problems with my gateway (twice failed hd and cracked lid-joint due to heavy abuse) than my hp tx1000 (nvidia failure, hd erased by hp service, constant overheating... All while being careful not to hurt it like I did with my gateway)

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Holy CoW! - another NoLimits project

RIP Geauga Lake 1888-2007
F CF

Maybe we should have abused our HP laptops? I babied mine as well because I wanted it to last a bit. Then it decided 6 months was enough of me.

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Nah... I have a client replacing his DV9000 with a Dell. His literally fell apart, amongst multiple failures and it wasn't even 2 years old. He had an extended warranty, but it was null and void when the company went out of business (CompUSA) because they didn't want to mail it in.

Well, I should say they still honored the warranties, but you had to mail them in now. At least with Dell, you can choose an on-site tech if you so desire.

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ThrillNetwork Webmaster/Systems Administrator -- My Official Fansite -- Get Firefox!
Everytime I ride a coaster, it valleys. I've never been on a stalled coaster or had one roll back (except Wicked Twister and what was Superman: Ultimate Escape, which does that by design).