HP Charges for Warranty Support

[nu7e9o5cp]

Hewlett Packard charges for warranty support.

Late last year I was looking for a small laptop to travel with. It's been ten years since I've last needed a laptop. I saw a few reviews for the HP Aero. It was on sale under $1k CAD after tax so I ordered one and have been pretty happy with it since.

That is until a couple weeks ago when I needed help from support. My laptop is still under warranty and I was trying to replace the secure boot vendor keys with my own. This is something Microsoft guarantees under their Certified for Windows badge - All x86-based Certified For Windows PCs must allow the user to configure Secure Boot to trust other bootloaders.

 

But this post isn't about whether HP violates the Certified for Windows policy - but their refusal to offer any technical support.

Their phone support refused to help me. First they said customization falls outside their warranty support. I said that I'm not trying to customize the operating system but need information about the BIOS and online documentation is inaccurate or inadequate. They said the only way to get support for the BIOS is to PAY for "HP SmartFriend".

I was able to continue escalating but I was never put in touch with tech support. Highest person I reached was a Consumer Escalations Manager who claimed to contact tech support on my behalf. He said basically the secure boot keys are fixed and it is not possible to enable enrollment mode.

Anyway I'm hoping this helps other folks down the road. It's very frustrating to be told your hardware issue falls outside the scope of warranty support and you have to pay. I can understand HP wanting to charge for *Windows* support - but when it comes to the hardware like BIOS or drivers, they are the gate keepers. I wish I had the time to play around with the BIOS when I purchased the laptop; I would have returned it while I could.

I definitely won't buy another HP laptop or product if I can help it. Again it's been ten years since my last laptop and I'm floored OEM's are still figuring out UEFI and secure boot... Core Boot needs to be standard.

[johnt]

I would be surprised if tech support from any company helped you with this.

[PDifolco]

I don't think warranty covers technical help in any country, it's usually an extra paying service 

[jaslion]

1 hour ago, nu7e9o5cp said:

It's very frustrating to be told your hardware issue falls outside the scope of warranty support and you have to pay.

It's not warranty it's an additional device feature you want them to unlock for you. If you order them in a bussiness load they sometimes even ask this and it's an additional service cost as it's a non standard configuration. So yeah this is not warranty and it is also something you normally have to ask BEFORE purchasing these devices and you have to do it DIRECTLY from hp.

[nu7e9o5cp]

A couple things:

• Without paying for support, HP wouldn't even tell me whether changing keys was possible. I don't need my hand held changing keys - just enabling enrollment mode in the BIOS. Something that some of their consumer laptops do support so how am I to know?
• Why does Microsoft claim "All x86-based Certified For Windows PCs must allow the user to configure Secure Boot to trust other bootloaders” if some OEM's can decide otherwise?

To me this is a hardware issue. Or at least the question whether secure boot key enrollment is *possible* falls under reasonable warranty support.