HP Says Cats Void Your Warranty

jsmiddleton4 said:
Not siding with HP on this one. Sorry. But this is a slippery slope. If HP can not decide to not fix a laptop under warranty unless the warranty spells it out.
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But I bet it is a covered exception under the biohazard exclusion.
 
So how exactly does the average person clean inside his laptop without voiding the warranty? Compressed air does not remove animal hair, or human hair for that matter.

I mean, I'm perfectly comfortable stabbing my screwdriver through those "warranty void if broken" stickers and taking a laptop apart and scraping out whatever is in there but I don't think most people are.
 
If this was a desktop, I would agree however. Considering this is a laptop and they did that.. yea hell with HP. None of their computers are good anyways and their past CEO was a moron to boot.
 
This is one of the reasons I pay for LOLBestBuys repair 3yr accidental warranty. No bull shyt like this, you just gotta deal with the retarded IT workers.
 
DoubleParadoxx said:
Many people are allergic to cats. That would easily qualify it as a biohazard.
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Please, that's pathetic. I cleaned electronics full of monkey hair, rabbit hair, and nice stains on the case. You wear gloves and a dust mask and get the sand out of your vag first.
 
And to add, the stuff under the keys of every keyboard ever is way worse than cat hair in a heatsink.
 
I'm asthmatic, and am allergic to both smokers and cats, and the PC's I've cleaned over the years as a tech support I've cleaned out at times I literally could take out -FISTFULLS- of cat hair covered in cigarette smoke residue and I still fixed them

I'm not siding with HP on this one, to me it just looks like a scapegoat to skimp out on a rather super expensive repair. Human dander causes more allergic reactions then pet dander even.
 
Squall_Rinoa89 said:
This is one of the reasons I pay for LOLBestBuys repair 3yr accidental warranty. No bull shyt like this, you just gotta deal with the retarded IT workers.
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There really is a reason the pamphlets specifically mention things like pet dander are covered.
 
Then it's unfair to expect joe schmoe to conduct preventative maintenance when doing so voids his warranty.

I never owned a laptop, so I'm not sure how you would go about cleaning the hs/fan without opening up, is it possible?
 
After having been brought computer with dead roaches cat and dog piss i'm gonna have to side with HP , keep you shit clean people live like pigs!
 
It's not about HP cleaning it for him. His laptop was fried and he wanted it fixed on their dime.

They reported back that he fried his PC by neglecting it. They took photos as proof. His screen has marks, trackpad buttons were really worn down, etc. There is a PDF with more photos.
 
HisSvt76 said:
After having been brought computer with dead roaches cat and dog piss i'm gonna have to side with HP , keep you shit clean people live like pigs!
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Not pigs, cats. If you own pets, your devices are bound to get a little hair in them.

A bit of hair is not the same as dead roaches or piss, it is not avoidable nor unusual, and it is not directly end-user servicable without voiding the warranty.

They did not demonstrate that the tiny amount of hair there slowed the fan below its threshold speed, which would produce an error alert as it is monitored and recorded. They didn't show any signs of thermal damage, nor should it be a factor since that machine will automatically shut itself down if there is excessive heat buildup (done so that people that inadvertently put their laptops in their bags without shutting it down don't fry it).
 
I read an article not all that long ago where a user in Memphis (I believe) had purchased a mac, also purchased there extended care package.

Brought the machine in for repair and was denied service based on the fact that it smelled like cigarette smoke. Apple also revoked his warranty. Smelled mind you, not covered in residue, just smelled. I can not even imagine how we watched TV back in the 70's, and hey all those old electronics lasted for 20+ years.

Unfortunately dick heads like this who are not properly trained, trying to meet a bottom line while keeping repair costs to a minimum give me more business because of there "I don't give a shit" attitude towards the people that are driving there company's sales.

"F" em all....

People pay a lot of money for there tools and toys and used within reason there is no excuse why they will not repair these things. It wasn't dropped in a sink full of dishwater etc... They have an obligation to repair the machine. At a minimum if they find that there fan has stopped because there was so much hair involved maybe they should offer a partial solution as a good will gesture to fix it for a cost that is fair and below what the cost of a new machine is.

Go figure it's called a "laptop", this guy probably sits on his couch for hours using this HP branded LAPTOP while his cat sits right next to it getting it's fur sucked into the heatsink. Probably never dawned on the guy that during normal use (which is very subjective to the actual person using the machine) that his cat was killing his laptop.

If sucking dust/hair and dander into a laptop is that big of an issue able to void a warranty then HP has an obligation to design a better air system with a removable screen/filter that can be cleaned on schedule that they specify in there user manual and expressed in the warranty.
 
woodscomp said:
"F" em all....

People pay a lot of money for there tools and toys and used within reason there is no excuse why they will not repair these things.
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It goes both ways, if HP or any OEM did EVERYTHING customers wanted for free they'd go out of business, unless they charged a lot more for the things to begin with.
 
HP doesn't have vacuum cleaners? The pics in the pdf aren't enough to convince me. A pass of a vacuum and gloves which you should be wearing anyway and all is ok.
 
Cobalt35 said:
Worked in a computer shop a while back and someone brought a laptop in that "didn't work any more." Turned out he'd left it open under his bed and his cat pissed all over it. The smell was so bad we sealed it in several plastic bags and refused to work on it.
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muzzle79 said:
I concur, even more so common were the *smokers* that had their pc's turn that dingy smoke stained color. I once saw a system that actually have a buildup of ash and fluids (guy used to put ash tray right on top of his pc), it had fallen onto the system and seeped through the fan. He didn't clean it, so it just started collecting particles in the air, growing into this mass of horrible stench. His system was overheating badly and he couldn't figure out why. So damn nasty.

As for biohazards, I worked at a large repair facility back in the early 00's and it wasn't uncommon to receive Microwaves that weren't functioning, only to open them and find hundreds of cockroaches! Immediately we triple plastic sealed them and sent them back to the store of origination with a big biohazard label as well as a pamphlet on how to rid you home of infestations.
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Whoa. Gotta agree on senario's like these.

THRESHIN said:
i think some of you guys who are siding with HP are missing an important point here.

getting cat hair inside a computer if you own a cat is a fact of life. probably same for a lot of dog owners, i've never owned a dog.
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I live with three women. I swear they shed more hair than the dog or the cat. Guess warrany's are out of the question for us. ;)

beowulf7 said:
I guess the moral of the story is your pussy is screwing you. :eek:
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;)
 
Clearly the guy at HP who took it apart to take those pictures are not allergic to cat though. Yet somehow they could go through all that trouble to take the pictures but not clean it.:rolleyes:
 
Having done PC service work for years, the pictures are not near the worst I've seen. We've had baby urine ("oh, I keep it under my bed and the baby would crawl under and must have laid on it because it was warm" - after I took it apart and sent pictures to the client ><), Beer (after a week+ of sitting in the laptop), throw-up (listed third because I'm still not sure it didn't smell worse than the beer one).

If I'm told upfront about what happened to the system, we're normally pretty cool about what we'll repair.

Also for those talking up complete care / thinkpad protection etc. They all have clauses for damages above and beyond / negligence / biohazard. In really crappy (literally) situations you best hope for a nice technician. I've personally never turned down a pet dander/fur related issue, but they're not as prevalent as you'd think. IF, and I mean IF this picture shows the worst of it, I would have proceeded under warranty, however I would have explained the situation to the client and how they could prevent it from occurring again.
 
Gibbage said:
One computer was hit by lightning. That in itself is odd. But that computer was owned BY A CHURCH. Wow! Then I found out that the church NEVER PAID FOR THE COMPUTER!!!! True story!
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...How the fuck did lightning strike a computer inside a building?
 
I live with 3 cats (the people I live with look after rescue cats, so theres about 5/6 here at any one time). But I never have any kind of problem with hair like this...:confused: Even the radiator with 4x GT fans only gets dust collected in it...none of the laptops of other people have been affected either, and people use those on the damned floor.

MavericK96 said:
...How the fuck did lightning strike a computer inside a building?
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It was made of copper.
 
Am I missing something? I only see a couple strands of cat hair on the heatsink.
 
THRESHIN said:
getting cat hair inside a computer if you own a cat is a fact of life. probably same for a lot of dog owners, i've never owned a dog.
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I kind of think this is dependent on the animal. We have 3 small short hair dogs and hair has never been a problem with any of our computers which are all are kept off the floor. I've rarely seen hairs when doing my monthly cleaning.
 
When I worked corporate desktop support many moons ago, my coworker would not work on computers with "cat" on them. He was rather allergic to cats, and he's start sneezing/etc as soon as we opened a box that had a laptop that had been in the domain of a cat.
 
I'm OK with HP on this one.

Wayyyyy back I used to repair PCs and I have a few things to say about it:

1) Not cleaning out any electronic device exposed to too much dirt (foreign matter in general) is asking for trouble, especially one that relies on active cooling that can get clogged. Warranty is for defects, not damage caused by improper maintainance.

2) A picture might not show the whole story. I had PCs come in occasionally that smelled like urine. If your cat pees on your PC, damage from that is not under warranty.

3) Cat hair can technically be a biohazard. Lots of people are alergic to cat hair.
 
If the fact that somebody out there might be allergic to cats means that any hair (even this small amount) should make his warranty invalid, then I suppose anybody who has ever touched anything manufactured in a plant that processes peanuts should have their warranty invalidated too because hey, it's a biohazard, maybe they touched the notebook after eating something with peanuts and maybe the tech is allergic to nuts.

No, the fact that somebody MIGHT be allergic to something is NOT enough to consider it a biohazard. Some people out there are allergic to seafood, ban that? Some are allergic to plastic. The list goes on. You know what you do? If you're the tech that's allergic to cat hair, and you find that little amount in that picture is upsetting your allergies then pass it to the guy next to you who doesn't have that allergy. Just like somebody with a peanut allergy can't eat peanuts - doesn't mean that everybody else shouldn't be allowed to ever have them either.

Now, if the cat hair was actually at fault that might be one thing, but that picture - there's almost no cat hair in that fan.
 
Plus, with it being a notebook, if he did in fact regularly open it, clean it completely, and close it back exactly the right way you'd have HP STILL saying 'Well, you opened it, your warranty is now invalid.'
 
Ualdayan said:
Plus, with it being a notebook, if he did in fact regularly open it, clean it completely, and close it back exactly the right way you'd have HP STILL saying 'Well, you opened it, your warranty is now invalid.'
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My laptop has a separate small cover over the CPU cooler, take out 4 small screws and you have acess to clean the whole cooler. There were no stickers over that part of the case to prevent me from properly cleaning it and in the process voiding the warranty.
 
The "allergic" is pretty lame and light. Oh I am allergic to dust... you have dust.. no warranty for you.

Simple fact, many people have pets. Negating their warranty really shouldn't be an option.

A "dirty" service fee is acceptable, obviously real biohazard like feces and urine and cockroaches should be rejected.

This case is NOT obvious biohazzard, they put those generic terms in there all the time... I am allergic to purfume and I can smell it... No warranty for you!!!

For all the people that say "they should clean and take care of their stuff"... well you know better. 95% of the rest of the people don't.

They pretty much don't include manuals anymore... if this was such a big warranty issue they would make easy to remove coolers and fans and have a big poster like sheet with how to properly care for your product.

I am never seen one, maybe they exist???

I call bull on this, HP tech was in a shitty mood.
 
canna said:
My laptop has a separate small cover over the CPU cooler, take out 4 small screws and you have acess to clean the whole cooler. There were no stickers over that part of the case to prevent me from properly cleaning it and in the process voiding the warranty.
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Most don't though. Last notebook I opened had to have 8 screws removed, and a warranty void sticker removed to get to the CPU.
 
Lots of animal haters out there.

Service jobs can be dirty. Most service guys 50 or older would have just took their shop vac to the thing, cleaned it up, and repaired it. I see it all the time.

The new generation of workers includes some of the laziest any society has ever produced. Don't do shit except complain and collect a paycheck. Crybabies the whole lot! Man up, get the shop vac and hold your breath for 30 seconds!

Computers suck up dust, hair, and dander, and run a little hot over time. Anyone who repairs any computer sees much worse dust and hair than that guys, and it does way less damage. Honor up and just repair the damn computer, so you don't loose future customers due to negative publicity!

Think anyone reading this thread want's to run on out and but HP now?
 
RayBob said:
The new generation of workers includes some of the laziest any society has ever produced. Don't do shit except complain and collect a paycheck. Crybabies the whole lot! Man up, get the shop vac and hold your breath for 30 seconds!
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Funny you claim workers complain and whine, yet consumer do the very same thing. Some aren't even clever enough to check if their computers are plugged in to whine about faulty material. I won't say you're wrong about the whining workers, but consumers are just as bad.
 
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