Dan made a boo-boo and now he’s blue-blue. He broke his wife’s laptop and decided to replace it with a HP DV6t Special Edition laptop, picking one up for himself too. But he’s not the only one suffering from discoloration, so are his laptops’ screens. They’re continually afflicted by the dread “Blue Screen of Death.” He’s called and complained and exchanged the laptops several times, but each time, BSOD. They’re on laptops 7 & 8 now. What’s the deal?

Dan writes:

Dear Consumerist:

I’m hoping you can help. I broke my wife’s laptop by accident and needed to replace it. I found a great deal from HP back on December 4. It was such a good price on a fairly high-end laptop, I decided to replace my older, slower laptop too. A friend had recently ordered a similar model and was thrilled with it. I ordered from the HP website.

On December 13th I received the two laptops and began the setup on the first one. After about 10 minutes the laptop crashed, the blue screen came on stating “Windows has shut down”, etc. I called HP and spoke with several service technicians regarding the problem, and they helped me try several things and did a complete reinstall with recovery manager, and the computer continued to crash. I then opened the second laptop and had the exact same problem, the blue screen. After speaking with HP again we decided to return the laptops and re-order them.

We received computer three on Dec 24 and the same issues arose (always in the first few minutes). Another call to service technicians, and we again tried everything again reloading the system with a reinstall. It continued to crash, and I was getting fed up with seeing blue screens. On December 29th we received computer number four- and yep, same blue screen.

When the service technicians could not fix it, after insisting on someone with additional skills, I was then sent to the next tier of technicians. It was a day later and I received a call from Matt. Matt was also not able to help and asked that I send the computer in for a repair, I told Matt that repair was not an option as the computer was only a few hours old. So he said my only other option was to reorder the computers again. I guess I’m stubborn, but on December 28th and 29th computer number five (5) and six (6) were ordered.

On January 5th I received the fifth computer and yes the same problem – system continued to shut down. On January 10th the sixth computer arrived and both have the familiar crash–shutdown–blue that I’ve come to expect.

Finally, I found a number for Executive Customer Service. I called and talked with a great person Wanda. She took all of the information and said she would send it off to the HP store executive and that they would get back to me with a solution. That was two weeks ago and to date I have not heard from Wanda or the HP Store Executive.

On January 12 I reordered two more computers, numbers 7 and 8. On Jan 24th I received them and again both of the computer crashed- shutdown – blue screen. I am at a loss and I am getting nowhere with HP. Today I tried to call Wanda at HP Executive Service and at this time I have not received a returned phone call. Just for fun, do I order computers 9 and 10? I might have a record here.

Can Consumerist help? I’m feeling kind of…blue.

Thanks,
Dan

At this point I think you should just cut your losses, ask for a refund under lemon law, and go buy a different model.

We’ve reached out to HP for comment and to see if they have any advice for Dan and his wife.

UPDATE: HP says they are looking into the issue. We’ll keep you posted.

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