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OT: Costco return policy

fourwallingfourwallingMember
I Love it!

On February 14th, I ordered a $1455 HP computer online from Costco. If I had ordered the identical CPU from HP, the cost would be $89 less.

But,

Several years ago, I got a new HP printer for use at work that failed within 7 days of receipt. HP sent me 2 “refurbished” printers that failed very quickly. Fortunately, I have a contact that works for HP and I asked him if he could get them to send me a new printer. He did, and everything worked out fine.

Today, I tried to copy a CD. The burned CD won’t eject from the drive. I called Costco’s concierge service for help. With their guidance, I could still not get the CD to eject.

The nice lady on the phone instructed me to take the side panel off the computer. I told her that since Costco has a 90 day, full money refund on computers, I was not going to open the CPU.

She said that HP warranty requires me to send the CPU back to them for repair.

I told her that the reason I paid the extra money to buy the computer from Costco is because I could return it within 90 days and get a full refund.

I said: “do you want to send an HP repairman to the house?”

She said, “That is not the HP warranty”.

I said, “fine, I will just order a new computer and drop this one back at the store”.

She agreed that since Costco has a 90 day computer return policy, I am cool.

I will give Costco another call and ask them if they want to send a technician out to the house. If they say no, that is fine with me. I will order the identical computer from them, earn the points on my AE card and be a happy camper.

Spending the extra $89 to buy the computer through Costco was the right thing to do.
I will make good use of the American Express rewards points.

I suspect that Costco’s 6% price premium covers the cost of doing business in regards to their return policy.
I am going to give Costco one more shot. I will turn off the computer tonight. If the CD ejects in the morning, everything will be cool.

If not, I will go online and order the identical HP computer-I really do like it.
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T tomsealbeachMember
Kerry...I feel bad sometimes when I return stuff at Costco...honestly I've taken stuff back years later. But I agree with you on the computer...take it back, that's the benefit of a Costco membership. Can't say I wound buy an HP again...I bought an HP laptop for my daughter from Costco a few years ago...had issues after I purchased it and fortunately I purchase the entended contract which covered every thing from dropping it to running it over with the car (remember it's my 18 year old daughter's).

14 months later the computer started having issues, it was like pulling teeth getting it fixed with HP even with the extended warranty...HP told me I purchased an extended warranty for an inkjet printer...even after I faxed a copy of the warranty that said it was for a laptop they kept telling me it was a printer. After two months of going back and forth with the ding dongs in god only knows where, I called the president of HP and told them this was a great commercial for Dell and that I was going to call Dell if they didn't fix my issue immediately...the next day I had a shipping box on my door, I shipped the computer to HP's "special customer" department (for people that are smart enough to call the president I guess) and within three days HP sent the computer back with a new motherboard and hard drive and it worked great for another year.

Just last week we started seeing as a message that the hard drive is going to fail and to back up immediately. Not sure about HP desktops but their laptops have a 20% hardware failure rate in the first three years...one of the worst records. The best laptops are Asus, Toshiba, Sony,(all under 10% failure) while Acer, Dell and HP are all around 20% failure rate.

I wish you luck.
4nford4nford"Live wrong and Perspire"
Yup, Costco has the best return policy. I believe that computer and TV purchases from Costco comes with a double period warranty (or used to). They have the best auto battery warranty too . . . 9 years, first 3 years no pro rating. High cranking amp rating, I've had one in my Push button for a couple of years, it runs very infrequently and hasn't given me a problem yet.
zr1panterazr1panteraForum Sponsor - SACC Restorations
quote:
Not sure about HP desktops but their laptops have a 20% hardware failure rate in the first three years...one of the worst records. The best laptops are Asus, Toshiba, Sony,(all under 10% failure) while Acer, Dell and HP are all around 20% failure rate


I have had HP laptops for years. Not one problem. Not sure where you get your failure rate figures from put they are not correct. As far as hard drives, HP doesn't make hard drives. They buy them from vendors like Hitachi, Western Digital, etc... (just like all the other computer makers)
T tomsealbeachMember
quote:
Originally posted by Z06 Pantera:
quote:
Not sure about HP desktops but their laptops have a 20% hardware failure rate in the first three years...one of the worst records. The best laptops are Asus, Toshiba, Sony,(all under 10% failure) while Acer, Dell and HP are all around 20% failure rate


I have had HP laptops for years. Not one problem. Not sure where you get your failure rate figures from put they are not correct. As far as hard drives, HP doesn't make hard drives. They buy them from vendors like Hitachi, Western Digital, etc... (just like all the other computer makers)


Z06 Pantera...Looks like you are one of the lucky HP laptop owners...I can tell you I have two HP laptops both purchased at Costco, one for my son purchased 14 months ago, one for my daughter purchased four years ago...daughters failed at under two years, failed again just recently, son's HP laptop not yet but its still under two years old...by my math that's a 50% failure rate in the first two years, not counting the second failure within four years on her HP laptops???

The report I read came from a one of the large warranty providers... they did a study on the laptops that they paid out claims on. I did the research about six months ago when my company was purchasing laptops. Yep and the drive and many other parts do come from other vendors like Western Digital, Fujitsu, Toshiba, Maxtor/Seagate...but if you purchase the cheapest hard drive to go into your product there is likelihood you may get higher failure rate. Its just like the Chinese auto parts we hear complaints about (ProComp comes to mind...no I can't show you data, just what I remember from comments on this and other forums).

This is one of the articles I read and it is pretty clear HP doesn't have a great record:
http://www.pcmag.com/image_pop...71,iid=242801,00.asp

Here's another article that I can't vouch for because I didn't do the research "personally", but it says HP has the worst record
http://computers.toptenreviews...st-and-hp-worst.html

http://www.squaretrade.com/pag...top-reliability-1109
click on the download PDF link and you will find the QUOTE BELOW:
"ASUS and Toshiba come out on top. With 3 year malfunction rates forecast to be under 16%, laptops from these two manufacturers are nearly 40% more reliable than Hewlett-Packard, the worst performer in our study. Sony and Apple also performed better than the average.
The industry leader HP, which shipped nearly 16 million laptops in the past year according to IDCiii, ranked dead last in our reliability study with over one-fourth of laptops expected to malfunction in 3 years. Gateway and Acer, the #2 maker of laptops, were also nearly as unreliable as HP, with an expected malfunction rate of over 23%."
zr1panterazr1panteraForum Sponsor - SACC Restorations
These type of studies are very subjective. Where did they get there failure data? How many units did they have in there study, etc..etc..etc... Almost any company can do a study and have the results come out in their favor. Of the failures, what type of failures were they. A 2 paragraph article with a pretty graph is not what I would base my purchasing decision on.
T tomsealbeachMember
This one is probably subjective too....

http://www.tomshardware.com/ne...eliability,7364.html

Hard to imagine that every study is flawed to the point that they all show HP having some of the worst reliability figures amongst the large mainstream manufacturers, especially when a magazine or website is slamming a manufacturer who could or does spend big bucks on advertising on those sites or in the magazine. I'm always skeptical when I read reviews of products if the manufacturer spends millions on advertising in that publication, but that's just me.
4nford4nford"Live wrong and Perspire"
Remember that all things are relative . . .

You need to factor in the quantity of units that the manufacturer sells. When working as a tech in Honolulu, our purchase study showed that Sony had a failure rate three times higher than other name brands, Further research revealed that Sony also sold three times as many units than the others so they were actually par for the course.
zr1panterazr1panteraForum Sponsor - SACC Restorations
quote:
Remember that all things are relative . . .

You need to factor in the quantity of units that the manufacturer sells. When working as a tech in Honolulu, our purchase study showed that Sony had a failure rate three times higher than other name brands, Further research revealed that Sony also sold three times as many units than the others so they were actually par for the course.


Well said, my point exactly...
fourwallingfourwallingMember
I just got done chatting online with HP.

They offered to send a technician to my house to replace the drive if I purchased a $79 policy from them. I declined because it cost me about that amount of extra money to buy the unit from Costco in case I needed to take advantage of their return policy-which now I do.

HP has very handy "pocket media drive" that slips into a slot on the front of the tower. With that unit, transferring the data to the new computer should be a breeze.

They also offered to send me a new tray with instructions on how to replace it, but I declined using that solution.

I hate to return the product to Costco, but they have a great return policy, I paid for it, and I am going to take advantage of their offering it.
fourwallingfourwallingMember
***update***

COSTCO IS A GEM!

Costco just conferenced me in with HP and HP has agreed to come out to the house and replace the optical drive at no cost to myself.

The Costco concierge also said he would do a follow up call after the scheduled repair to ensure that everything went smooth.

I am happy with both HP's as well as Costco's handling of this matter.
whiplashwhiplashMember
I have had very good luck with HP desk tops. All of the PI publishing, web work, accounting, everything was done on HPs which were very stable and still running. I did purchase one Dell computer based on a fellow Pantera owner's recommendation. It was the biggest piece of crap I have ever owned when it comes to a computer. I had the in-home service and they simply never showed up. I took it to a service center and they boxed it up and shipped it off. They first said the video card failed and that wasn't covered. I paid for it just to get my computer back and fought it out with Dell who later agreed and reimbursed me. When I bought the computer I was told it had little slots to insert memory cards and when the computer arrived, they were absent. The Dell rep said they weren't available and just to use one of those junction boxes. However, the computer only had four USB ports and they already were filled up with other hardware.
I just bought my second HP Slimline computer. These are amazing little computers that take up hardly any desk space and have great speed, memory and storage. They cost around $500.00.
I will be mindful of what you said about Costco and purchase my next one there. Dave
fourwallingfourwallingMember
Well, we are all fixed up.

I told the peep on the phone at HP (I wasn't at this computer at the time) that I needed the drive that was the bottom of the 2 installed. I asked him to just look at the specs and send it to me for the tech to install.

When I got home, I saw the optical drive needed was a cd player.

When the HP tech arrived, we opened the box. HP sent a CD/DVD read/write optical drive-a bit of an upgrade.

Everything is fine, and Costco did their follow up call in a timely manner to see if everything went well.

It did.

I am currently a fan of both HP and Costco.
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