For some reason it seems like I’m just not very lucky with computers right now…

After my recent (and still somewhat ongoing) PC issues, my laptop gave up over the Thanksgiving weekend. This is a Compaq Presario R3000Z that is less than half a year old and that I’m otherwise extremely happy with. All of a sudden, the screen stopped working. Of course, I couldn’t resist taking the computer apart to see if this problem might have a simple cause, such as a disconnected cable. Unfortunately, this was not the case, and I decided to give up my own investigation and call upon the warranty instead.

The first couple of times I called Compaq / HP support, it was after hours in the US, and I was therefore redirected to their service center in India. I spoke to several very friendly and helpful customer service representatives who all agreed that I should send my laptop in for repair or replacement. Unfortunately, neither of them was able to take an RMA order because their database was down at the time. This continued for at least 1 1/2 days, after which I had enough… The problem was supposedly going to be fixed in another hour or two, but that’s what I had been told the previous day as well.

The next day, I had better luck. I called in the morning and got through to someone in the USA, who immediately placed an RMA order for me and arranged for a FedEx pickup the next day. After that, everything went extremely smooth. FedEx picked up the laptop on Tuesday, it arrived at Compaq / HP on Wednesday, they shipped the fixed laptop on Thursday, and I received it on Friday.

Everything is working fine again. It seems like they only had to replace the backlight, or maybe the entire LCD screen.