DON'T Buy A Compaq

Date: Fri, 23 Apr 2004 13:03:07 -0700 (GMT-07:00)
From: Marc & Shelly Hayden <mrh@teleport.com>
Reply-To: Marc & Shelly Hayden <mrh@teleport.com>
To: CyberPagan@OutoftheDark.com
Subject: DON'T Buy A Compaq


As a computer professional I should have known better.  After working on dozens of Compaqs for friends and in work environments, you would think I would know better.  After the absolute nightmare I had with my Brother's Compaq desktop a year ago, you would think I would learn.  Being a Quality Control specialist makes it even worse - I REALLY should have known better.

I bought the Compaq laptop because I couldn't afford the extra $700 to get the Dell with the same features.  I should have kept my money in my pocket, because I am left without a laptop and virtually no hope that the clunker of a lemon that I bought from Compaq will EVER function.  Their stuff is JUST JUNK, pure and simple.  DON'T EVER BUY COMPAQ.

It has been a disaster from the word go.  Worse, it is just the same sort of trouble you will find everywhere on the web when you type in a search for 'Compaq Complaints'.  

- tech support is a total joke.  Hours spent waiting for a connect, who speaks virtually no english, and whose first statement (before anything else) is 'your laptop is out of warranty' - even when it is not.  This 'out of warranty' tactic is their standard fare - just read anywhere on the net.  This is fraud, and you would think that some regulatory agency somewhere would be interested in fining them or something, but I truly think that it has come down to 'Look, YOU are the idiot who bought Compaq, you deserve what you get.'

- tech support is from a computer illiterate who walks you through a standard set of instructions from the tech support database, with no chance of any real world kind of help.

- The unit has never worked properly, and never will.  My particular problem is that the unit shuts down randomly.  Just powers off mid-task.  Won't power on again until you use a paper clip to reset the unit.  Eventually it crashes so hard that it just will not power up at all.  Take the battery out for a few days and try again, and the cycle starts all over again.

-if\when I sit through another 5 hours of agonizing tech support and if I am allowed to send the unit in for repairs, based on what I see on the web I would expect the unit to vanish into the ether - their repair records are horrible - they lose RMA computers all the time, and then refuse to acknowledge that they even recieved them.  

If you are considering buying a Compq, for whatever reason DO NOT DO IT.  The products are garbage, and the company is the poster child for corporate dishonesty, low quality and unfair tactics.  DON'T BUY A COMPAQ - DON'T MAKE AN EXCEPTION 'JUST THIS ONCE'.

If it is between 'can't afford a computer' and Compaq, live without the computer - because if you buy a Compaq, you will not get a working computer, and you will just be out your money with the added bonus of a huge case of frustration.  I just cannot say this enough:  DON'T BUY A COMPAQ !!!