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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?
..the warranty on your car is invalid if you let someone smarter than you drive it.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
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.
and surprising to me at the same time - HP always seemed to be "one of the good guys", fostering and supporting GNU/Linux and free software on many occassions (for instance, HP provides the quite powerful infrastructure for kernel.org).
I was going to go buy a HP notebook some time later this year, but as things turn out this way, I'll stick to Lenovo/IBM once more again...
:%s/Open Source/Free Software/g
YTARY!
If Linux probes your hardware (monitor) and selects the incorrect settings, could that not potentially harm your screen? I am not saying Windows is not capable or the same problem, but at least you are not trouble shooting an entire OS. How does the woman know that she has not messed up some keyboard setting on Ubuntu? I would not want to be the tech who must troubleshoot over the phone a system which has a different OS than that which is installed. I love Linux, but you have to draw the line on troubleshooting somewhere.
One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
I had the keyboard start acting up as well on mine. In addition the hard drive crashed sometime later.
In order for them to do ANY service on it..
A) I had to replace the hard drive with one that worked.
B) Install windows on that hard drive
C) Submit laptop to HP to get the keyboard fixed.
D) Get Laptop back..
E) Put bad hard drive back in
F) Ship it back to HP in order for them to fix the bad drive.
I pretty told them to pound sand and bought a keyboard replacement on ebay.
I will NEVER own another HP again.
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.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
they also will not honor the support warranty if you switch XP versions.
I bought a laptop several years back at Best Buy, but it only had XP Home on it. I did the usual dump and reload, and installed XP Pro using one of my spare open licenses. I tried downloading the drivers like I do for every other brand, only to find they didnt exist.
I called support to find out how to get the windows drivers, and was told that they warrant the unit as a whole, and if ANY different OS is installed, they wouldnt talk to me. He did say that after running the restore utility to recover the factory load that it would be valid again.
Turns out that if anything ever happened to that laptop's software, the course of action would not be to fix the driver, etc, but to wipe and reload from scratch.
Thanks for nothing HP.
The next day I took it back to Best Buy and exchanged it for a Sony.
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!!!!
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.
As somebody who worked at various helpdesks for a few years as a phone monkey, this is SOP with any company. You can't run through the troubleshooting scripts unless the software on the PC is exactly or very close to the initial load. Helpdesk people are not trained to solve problems, just go through the appropriate steps. So, if you want your warranty honored, suck it up and install Windows. You would have known this if you had read the fine print when you bought the damn thing. If you want a Linux notebook, then buy a Linux notebook. Talk about a sense of entitlement...
I don't respond to AC's.
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.
Yea there is, I wish I could remember the name of the law now. Basically it was to protect aftermarket parts makers and people who customize their cars. If I lower the car, only the warranty on the suspension is affected. If I change the mufflers on the car, only the warranty on the exhaust is affected. Here's a link to some info about it from SEMA. http://www.sema.org/main/semaorghome.aspx?ID=50096
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.
FTFA
" "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."
HP didn't refuse warranty coverage, they told he she needed to remove Linux and reinstall the original OS to get warranty service.
That is completely reasonable. The script readers doing the trouble shooting at HP wouldn't be able to trouble shoot a system that didn't have the OS on it that HP originally installed.
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.
SHIFTKEYBROKENTOO.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
This is one of the reasons why whenever I buy a PC I never remove windows. I just shrink the partition to it's minimal size plus a GB or two, install linux, set it to default. Sometimes I even remove Windows from the grub menu.lst so I can't choose it by accident :)
There are several reasons you should not uninstall windows. One is what this article is about, warranty support. If you ever have a hardware issue you can just delete the linux paritions (after a backup) and ship the thing; unless the tech has some weird reason to do forensic analysis on the HD they will never know it ever had linux on it.
There are other reasons too - wine works better with some applications when you can point it at some actual windows DLLs. Also, you have the ability to boot into Windows to play the occasional game or other multimedia nonsense that don't work in Linux.
Really I don't know why someone who bought a PC that came with Windows, which THEY PAID FOR, would just go erase it anyways. It's a total waste of money, and you aren't sending anyone a "message".
Disk space is dirt cheap. Until you can buy PCs barebones with the Windows tax removed, IMO it is ill-advised to un-install.
Same here, though I just use a second HD for Linux and FreeBSD. BTW: I just contacted HP through chat, and asked if running Linux/FreeBSD would void my warranty. The answer was that running Linux would not void the warranty of my particular model (Pavilion t.490). It took a minute or 2 for the answer, but, it seems like HP does have some sort of list of Linux-compatible models. 8 years ago, I loaded FreeBSD on a Toshiba laptop (Satellite 320CDT). The first time I used X, I was greeted with a loud high pitched sound from the video-circuit (second try was ok), so I can understand the no-warranty statement for certain problems on certain models. Though I can't understand the relation between keyboard problems, loading Linux and no warranty. PS: During the support-chat, it was mentioned three times that Windows would run best, the computer was designed for Windows and I could not get support for Linux.
It only takes one man to change the Wisdom of the Crowd to Tyranny of the Masses.
I would think that under the Magnusson-Moss Warranty act that her machine is still warranted by law.
The act says that you can't tie people to only certain products. It's why having your car's brakes fixed at a small shop doesn't void the vehicle's warranty. If you look at Linux as just a part then she should have recourse.
I'd take them to small claims.
It seems to be covered here
"Tie-In Sales" Provisions Generally, tie-in sales provisions are not allowed. Such a provision would require a purchaser of the warranted product to buy an item or service from a particular company to use with the warranted product in order to be eligible to receive a remedy under the warranty. The following are examples of prohibited tie-in sales provisions.
Seems to me that saying use Windows or no warranty is a violation.
Standard disclaimer = IANAL
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.
Do you wonder why most probably there are no Alpha or MIPS desktop computers around you? That's right - because there is no version of Windows and Office for them.
I do have an Alpha close enough so my knee can touch it. It runs Win NT 4 and though I don't have it MS did release a version of Office to run on it. I think the only reason Alpha didn't last long was because DEC dropped the ball. They didn't do enough to market Alphas, Amiga deja vu all over again. They also didn't work on FX!32 enough to get it working tranlating software. On my Alpha I was only able to install one commecial app and a few shareware programs.
FalconShould there be a Law?
My experience with Compaq was that I bought Compaq after testing it with Mepis and Knoppix. Everything seemed to run at the store so I bought it. I had a hard time getting it to get the wireless running even in windows. The wireless card was a micro PCI card so I thought "lets just get a card that Linux supports". When I installed the card and booted the computer, it didn't get past the POST. There was an error message as soon as the BIOS came up saying, "Unsupported hardware detected" and it didn't even try to boot. This was only about 2 years ago. I simply won't buy a computer that mandates that I have to use hardware from the vendor. I sold it and got another computer that is completely supported. I also use every opportunity to warn poeple about such practices.
If thats the type of crap they want to pull with their hardware, I won't go anywhere near Compaq or HP!
HP's policy seems to generally be that the OS gets reimaged when the machine comes in anyhow. I was told this by a rep when sending my machine in for motherboard issues (zd7000 has issues using both RAM slots, Northbridge is a bit flakey). To avoid losing my data, I took out the 80GB drive and stuck in a blank 10GB. Oddly, the laptop came back with another 80GB drive and fresh OS install :-)
So I guess the solution is, don't mention linux, just stick a spare drive in and get a free upgrade.
First off, I would never buy hardware from HP again. Secondly, I would go down to my local county court house, and file a claim in small claims court for the amount that I paid for the HP computer, then go over to the post office and send the complaint to HP by registered mail.
Total cost, about 16 bux and an hours time.
Now, HP could decided to help you, return your money, or send an attorney to BFE where you live to defend the case.
If they do nothing, you go to court and get a default judgment for the cost of they system. Another hour on your part.
So, they will honor the warranty linux or not, you just have to not lie down for their Microsoft inspired tactics.
Large corporations will try this all the time, you just have to make the effort to stop them.
Cheers
* Carthago Delenda Est *