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HP Dishonors Warranty If You Load Linux
darkonc points us to a writeup on linux.com about a very Linux-unfriendly policy at HP. A woman bought a Compaq laptop and loaded Ubuntu on it. Some time later, still well inside the 1-year hardware warranty, the keyboard started acting up. An HP support rep told her, "Sorry, we do not honor our hardware warranty when you run Linux." Gateway and Dell refused to comment to the reporter on what they would do in a similar situation. (Linux.com and Slashdot are both part of OSTG.)
What does software have to do with a hardware waranty?
Gateway and Dell refused to comment to the reporter on what they would do in a similar situation.
Translation: Gateway and Dell definitely won't honor the warranty and wish to remain free from bad press until they are forced to reveal the truth.
Oh well. Stop buying HP then. Fuck 'em.
As for your current problem, lie. Double fuck 'em. Tell the support rep you were mistaken, the machine having a keyboard problem has never had Linux. Any Slashdotter should be able to BS through a Windows troubleshooting session, and if they want you to run some app and send results, bite the bullet, tell them you'll have to call back later, backup, load Windows, get your hardware, and restore.
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Seriously, if you have a fairly open and shut case of hardware failure, then there is no need to tell the person on the other end that you're using Linux. If your machine has to go back to the shop for repair, then slap the "restore" copy of Windows on it (assuming it's not too hosed to even boot off of CD) and send it back more or less the way you got it. If you don't have backups, well, it sucks to be you because most of the times the RMA guys won't save your data either.
However, if in the process of reinstalling the backup copy of Windows everything starts working again, well, maybe it was a problem with Linux after all.
I read the internet for the articles.
If she squawked up the chain, she'd get a new keyboard.
They have that policy because once some guy installs "random distro", and the wifi, or some other device "stops working", there's no way to troubleshoot that over the phone.
I wind up with that problem myself. It's hard with linux to know if the hardware has failed, the drivers have a bug, if they're configured incorrectly - or simply don't work at all. Especially when you're talking about that NDIS-wrapper crap.
I have a machine taht will randomly freeze up X - you can still ssh in, but X freezes. I dunno - is this X, nvidia's drivers, or the card? I dunno. Works fine in windows, so at least I ruled out the last option. I found a thread somewhere pointing to it being a bug. Like I said, I dunno.
Solution? Have a windows partition, even if it's on an old 3 gig drive - to be able to prove it's hardware that failed.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
If your software can break the hardware then your hardware is broken.
Why bother telling them which OS you run if it's anything *other* than what came pre-loaded on the system? If I had a hardware issue, big or small, and I called Tech Support for a place like Dell, HP/Compaq, etc, and they asked what I was running for an OS I'd happily lie to them and tell them it was Windows XP or whatever came pre-loaded.
It's the same thing dealing with Tech Support idiots in other countries who can't deviate from a script. They ask if I've done X, Y, Z and I gladly pretend as though I'm going through those exact steps until I reach the point in their script where they either need to escalate the issue or issue an RMA or pickup for repairs.
I'm not saying this lady is an idiot, but come on, have some common sense!!! If you call some PC manufacturer with a hardware issue, and they ask you what OS you're running, tell em' it's all stock. Same with cars. These companies work hard to fuck you out of your money and would love to dismiss your claim for support (however warranted), for any reason they can.
In short: "...If someone asks you if you're a God, you say YES!!!"
It's interesting to speculate as to the reason for this odd policy. The keyboard issues cited in TFA are clearly a purely hardware problem, unrelated to software. I've run some fairly iffy code, but I've yet to encounter something that would make my keyboard start sticking (some websites, however...). This policy's genesis would seem to lie in either ignorance or entanglement and I'm genuinely curious as to which one it is. Is it that HP's tech support folks are poorly adept with Linux and therefore officially eschew non-official installs? Or is there some sort of corporate pressure from Microsoft to make it less easy for Joe Blow to run Ubuntu and its ilk?
Given that HP (again, from TFA) sells laptops with Linux pre-installed, the former seems unlikely. The latter is indeed a fascinating can of worms.
P.P.S. I'm doing Science and I'm still alive.
I would ask the rep to point out where in their warranty this is stated. If it's not in the warranty, they have to honor the request. If they refuse to honor the request, go to your state's Attorney General and file a complaint. After that, post your comments on every blog you can find related to computers. Nothing gets accomplished more quickly than when bad PR is involved.
As someone higher up said, what does what software one has loaded on your system have to do with malfunctioning hardware?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
There's a warning in x86config when setting monitor refresh rates that warns you that your choice may destroy your monitor. Granted, thats not a necessary step in a lot of installs, and most people have moved to LCD screens that wouldn't explode, but I think they were thinking of something similar to that. Badly written drivers CAN destroy hardware, in rare cases.
Or, the higher level software may shorten the lifetime of hardware. Maybe Linux uses the hard disk more than Vista, which leads to higher usage frequency which causes it to reach its MTBF earlier.
Is it fair, no, not really. I'm sure you could wear out your hardware just even faster with certain applications.
They can't possible start rejecting the waranty, depending upon3rd party apps installed could they? I'm sure Something like Maya or Blender could put a lot of use on a hard disk, especially on a low end system without much RAM.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Laura Breeden bought a new Compaq Presario C304NR notebook in January. She bought it because she wanted to get rid of Windows and all the malware that surrounds it and move to Linux, and her old laptop lacked the memory and power to run Ubuntu Edgy. The salespeople assured her that the C304NR was "Linux ready." But they didn't tell her that running Linux would void her warranty. - this does not say whether she bought the laptop with MS Windows preinstalled. Not like it matters much, just a question.
Until recently, she's been happy with it, and with Ubuntu Edgy. But a couple of weeks ago she began having keyboard problems. The keyboard is misbehaving when she begins to type quickly: keys are sticking and the space bar does not always respond when pressed. - they don't build them like they used to.
When she called Compaq -- the unit comes with a one-year warranty on the hardware -- they asked what operating system she was running. When she told them Linux, they said, "Sorry, we do not honor our hardware warranty when you run Linux." In order to get warranty service, she was told, she would have to remove Linux and reinstall the original OS. - now this is trully evil (thus my question, was MS Windows preinstalled on the laptop? From the CSR it sounds like it was.) In any case what do sticky keys on a keyboard have to do with the OS?
Laura is not a software engineer, but she failed to see how her choice of operating system could damage the keyboard. Furthermore, there isn't a word about the subject on the Compaq C304NR Web page -- nothing to alert consumers to the fact that if they chose a reliable, secure operating system like Linux instead of Windows, they would lose their rights to service under warranty. - Laura is not a software engineer, but she is at least 10 times smarter than those Compaq representatives, but she is not evil enough.
She bought the notebook from Best Buy, and they did their best to sell her a maintenance contract ($200 for three years). But since the notebook only cost $549, she thought that was a lot of money to add to the purchase price, and she also thought that she could depend on the Compaq warranty. - or maybe she IS EVIL? What? Not paying for the obligatory extra warranty from Best Buy? Evil I tell you.
I've been tracking this story for a couple of weeks with a PR rep from Hewlett-Packard Customer Service, who has been trying to "do the right thing" by Laura. There has been some discussion of swapping her unit with an HP notebook which is available with Linux preinstalled, but after a couple of weeks of back and forth, nothing has changed. - normally 'do the right thing' in large corporations means either doing nothing (best case) or doing something trully evil, like suing the customer for their choice of product.
The PR rep told me, after wading through all the terms and conditions attached to the notebook's warranty, that "it is impossible to anticipate every single issue that a customer can face, so the terms and conditions of warranties can't list every possible scenario. Usually if a customer installs a different OS, it has a big impact on the PC and will void the warranty. - BS. Evil BS. Usually the OS does not do anything intrinsically bad to the hardware it is running, except for using it of-course.
However, since the OS couldn't have been responsible for keys sticking on a notebook keyboard, I think this is an exception to the rule." She also asserts that Compaq's "warranty terms and conditions are in line with the rest of the industry." - yeah, it is in line with the industry of Evil. Sticking keys on a product must be a new evil way that a customer is trying to undermine the innocent distributor.
I have a feeling that she is correct about that. Gateway and Dell have both declined to respond to queries about their own warranty coverage in a similar scenario. Tier one manufacturers like Dell and HP are locked up in double-blind secrecy about their marketing deal
You can't handle the truth.
From the Article:
"Until recently, she's been happy with it, and with Ubuntu Edgy. But a couple of weeks ago she began having keyboard problems. The keyboard is misbehaving when she begins to type quickly: keys are sticking and the space bar does not always respond when pressed."
KEYS STICKING. SPACE BAR DOES NOT RESPOND WHEN PRESSED. That's HARDWARE failure not SOFTWARE.
I sure as hell hope you are not a tech because if you can't read the article and understand the basics of her problem, you are a useless. Learn how to troubleshoot moron.
Linux is actually a supported OS on some Thinkpads.
Vote with your $$$. If HP is screwing you, screw them. Give someone else your money that values your business.
Unless the whole thing is staged to generate nerd-rage on slashdot.
/. and linux.com in general.
What proof is there that this event ever happened? I know that HP is pretty hated around
Here's a story: I called novell support, the guy called me a "faggot" and told me to "go fuck myself". I called Apple to order an iPhone and they told me the same thing. They also said the holocaust was a lie! Boycott Apple please.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Unfortunately they have a blanket policy stating that certain things must remain as installed in order not to void your warranty. Adding granularity to that policy in order to allow only certain pieces of hardware and (likely) only certain hardware vendors to be covered under the policy, etc. Each of those stipulations is going to require testing to make sure that it is solid enough to be covered by the warranty, etc. Doing this drives up support costs.
C'mon slashdot, you can't have your cake and eat it too. If you want to install things on your own, accept that bulk etailers are geared for the computer-illiterate masses and your modifications will likely void warranties and support contracts. If you want to modify operating systems or hardware configurations without violating agreements you should purchase your box from a smaller supplier who is geared towards people like you or build it yourself. That will probably be more expensive than buying a cheap Dell, but it's the age-old axiom "you get what you pay for".
Slashdotters, for the love of god, please stop complaining that after shopping around for the cheapest deal you're not getting top-of-the-line service. This is as annoying as the people who buy all their airfares at the cheapest possible price and then complain that they don't have legroom.
If I replaced the software in my cars computer, and then one of my doors falls off, I'd expect it to be fixed under warranty.
Now, if I destroyed my seals due to bad ignition timing, then that's arguably my own fault and wouldn't be covered.
Amazingly, this is how car warranties do work... unauthorized modifications don't void the entire warranty, they just void the coverage on damage that can be linked to your modification.
Now, IANAL, but it may not be a legally binding clause to state that loading a different OS invalidates the entire hardware warranty. I think there's consumer protection laws that'd require there to be a potential link between the two. Hence, replacing a physically defective keyboard should still be covered.
Nobody has hardware diagnostics any more. It used to be that when you had a hardware problem, you booted the hardware diagnostics disk and ran tests. Better manufacturers provided you with such a disk.
Today, most of the "PC diagnostic" tools run on Windows, which assumes Windows is 1) installed, and 2) will run. This makes sense, because Windows is most likely to be the defective component.
HP (as a whole) can't hate Linux. I know this because we run HP servers where I work, and their entire Smartstart process for loading the OS onto their servers are Linux driven.
This is a simple case of a helpless helpdesk for the desktop division not being able to peer above the edges of their box, let alone think outside of it. Nonstandard? Exterminate it. Not our problem. This is true of every level 1 desktop support organization I've ever seen.
I doubt you'd get the same response from the gold level guys on the server side of things. Actually, IIRC, one of them used a minix variant to troubleshoot a problem I had with an old LC3, since we didn't want to mess with the existing disks or OS partition.
Is HP as a whole to blame? Yeah, they should get their stuff together. But they're sitting in a field of pariahs at the moment.
It would seem to make more sense for the vendors to have a LiveCD version of Windows to boot and test with, instead of assuming that you'll never modify your hard drive. For those who actually keep Windows and use it, their setup would hardly be "factory" anyhow.
If you're going to require an untouched install for warranty, then you'd better be the ones providing it, either via a ROM chip, a LiveCD, or through a seperate recover partition that buyers are instructed not to wipe (or else warranty is void). In which case you should also state the "usable" hard disk space, not the total, when selling the machine.
Expecting people to not actually write to their hard drive, therefore not using the system at all, is a pretty stupid requirement for hardware warranty anyhow. And is almost certainly illegal in most juristictions.
Too bad.
If that is an issue then they can include a bootable CD that puts the hardware in a known state without overwriting the hard drive.
There is no such thing as a none custom software set up. People load software and yes even sometimes malware on a system. There is an assumption with a computer that you will load software on it. If they are going to not offer warranty support if I load a different OS then it is up to HP to clearly state that before I buy a computer from them.
And let's be honest. From what I have heard about HP/Compaq there tech-support is reload the the restore image and if that doesn't work send it in.
Don't get me started on what a ripe off HD based restore images are! Yea you have an 100 gigabyte hard drive but X amount is your restore partition because we are too cheap to include a disk.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
... that which can be explained by incompetence. I doubt the phone jockeys could tell what was going on, they just knew their company only supports Windows. To dodge stupidity, one must learn to hmm... bend reality a little.
Yes, the operating machine provided with the machine, to which the warranty does not apply. And in the latter case, yes, if there was a problem that could legitimately be related to the transmission fluid, then yes, they could deny you service. That's why transmission fluid conforms to standards; you just pick another fluid that conforms to the same standard.
If they needed their tranny fluid to do a diagnostic, then they would be responsible for putting it in, because they cannot require that I use it. They can only require that I use a fluid that conforms to proper standards.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"