We posted Nathan’s story about his inability to get HP to help him with his laptop battery problem yesterday. Now the company quickly diagnosed the issue and offered to do a warranty exchange with the computer.

He writes:

Thanks for the help. I used the Softpaq tool Chilijohn <../../../..//cgi-bin/mt/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=1&id=83505> mentioned in his post, and managed to find the support assistant suite for my operating system (which was not listed on my model’s support page). This included the battery check application that I needed. I ran the test and it gave a false positive for a battery that’s gone through too many cycles, so it said it wasn’t covered by the warranty — they don’t cover normal wear and tear on the battery, which is partially understandable but you cant really blame the user for their battery dying after 8 months of use.

I called them up thinking there was an error on the software end regarding my warranty status. The tech I got was fantastic–right off the bat, he used his own intuition and experience to try to solve my problem rather than a flowchart. At first, he suspected that it was the battery, and that it was from over-usage. Then I explained to him that the problem came about overnight; I had never had trouble with the battery /holding/ a charge, as it just wouldn’t charge in the first place. Apparently this wasn’t in the ticket summary, despite having brought it up with all 3 previous techs. So he put me on hold to gather information. I still had the battery utility up, and as I watched, it would flash every once in a while saying the battery was in fact in perfect condition. I told him after he got back and he told me that matches what he actually suspected it to be: a malfunctioning controller, or some other defect in the circuitry between the battery and the adapter. Hmm. We went over the ticket again, and confirmed that I had gone through all of the proper procedures and verified that we had the right problem diagnosed. Everything checked out, and he proceeded to act on my warranty by offering me my shipping options, and now a free box is on the way to my dorm for me to ship them my computer.

As a side note, they entered my computer’s identification information wrong from the get-go. Disappointing. It also would have been disappointing if I had actually paid the money for the recovery disks to find out that my battery was out of warranty and that I was SOL (which would have been the wrong prognosis still).

All is good now, and I’d like to thank you and the other staff at The Consumerist for doing what you do, and continuing to be a valuable resource to consumers in distress. I’ll let you know if I have trouble with delays in shipping or repair. I’ve been given an expected turn around that should leave me with my computer by the middle of next week.

Nathan faced down a complicated issue that would have made many give up in frustration, but it looks as though his perseverance has paid off.

Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.