Chris bought a Hewlett Packard-Compaq laptop that started suffering an ink blot-like glob of dead pixels several months later. Convinced that the malady is due to a manufacturing defect, he’s trying — so far unsuccessfully — to get HP to warranty it out. He writes:

I am submitting this story to your website hoping to make the public aware of HP warranty coverage regarding defective LCDs in their laptops.

We bought the laptop (HP-Compaq HP G60-230US) 7-8 months ago and it was working fine. We booted up one morning and we had an ‘ink blot’ in the bottom-middle of the screen and over the next few days it ‘grew’, and actually grew a sister spot on another part of the LCD. We called HP support and they had us send in the laptop. We received a call about a week later telling us the LCD damage was caused by us by, and get this, “opening and closing the LCD too hard” and would not be covered under the manufacturer’s warranty, which is absurd considering the cost of repairing it is almost as much as we paid for the laptop new. (roughly $200 to repair, including parts and labor, versus $350 paid for the unit brand new).

HP support then proceeded to tell us, and personally adding insult to injury, that we could still use the laptop, just plug in an external monitor. When we pointed out that kind of defeats the purpose of having laptop, they told us we could pay to replace the LCD.
We are not the only people being affected by these “ink blots” as evidenced here.

People with this issue all seem to describe the same symptoms: one day the unit is fine, the next day the LCD has an inkblot that develops in the lower-middle of the screen and spreads.

I find it outrageous that HP’s warranty does not cover faulty LCDs and that they are insisting that we caused the damage ourselves by being ‘too rough’ with our laptop (which we are not, it stays on the desk when not traveling)

I am also submitting a complaint to the BBB, but would like your site to run the story, if deemed appropriate, so people become aware of HP LCD issues on certain models of their laptops.

Has anyone else dealt with a similar problem with their laptop?

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