Hewlett-Packard Company HP, Hewlett-Packard Corporation Defective products Palo Alto, California

I bought an HP Pavillion dv9500 (dv9640us) laptop in April of 2009. I had the laptop for nine months before the graphics chip (an NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GS) fried and broke down.  I called Hewlett-Packard as soon as I could but was told that the issue was not going to be taken care of by the company because the warranty expired 02 January 2009.  They refused to hear anything to the contrary because I had no receipt to validate when I had bought it.

The issue with defective NVIDIA cards has been known about for years.  Hewlett-Packard in particular released a BIOS update 20 November 2007 to leave the cooling fans on the laptops listed under their extended warranty plan permanently running, draining the battery life and only delaying the inevitable failure, in nearly all cases past the warranty period.  NVIDIA set aside $196,000,000 USD to handle the problem and pay for repairs associated with their defective graphics chips, and this was to go to the OEMs such as HP.  Instead, HP has simply covered a small fraction of the affected laptops and the rest of the owners must pay about $400.00 USD to have a new motherboard (with the same defective GPUs) installed.  At the same time, it is assumed (and with a fair amount of evidence to back it up) that they go to NVIDIA afterwards and are paid an additonal $200.00 USD for repairing a "faulty" product.

In my case, I took Hewlett-Packard to court for knowingly selling a defective product and refusing to handle the situation.  My case was heard on 28 January 2010 and a default judgement in my favour for $1,655.78 USD ($1,600.00 for the laptop, $40.00 for the filing fee, $15.78 in interest) because Hewlett-Packard's representative failed to show.  After I left the courthouse to catch my train back home, I called the courthouse to make sure I didn't forget to sign paperwork.  I was told the representative (Scott Crooks, HP's Greater Boston District Manager) had showed up and filed a motion to vacate the judgement because he was late.  I have to go back 04 March 2010 for a payment hearing, but also so the clerk-magistrate can hear arguments for and against the motion to vacate the judgement.  I will say this: the HP representative's story as to why he was late is incredibly faulty and amusing, and according to my mother (a Massachusetts court reporter) and an attorney I spoke to, this will be easier than actually proving my case.

If you own a Hewlett-packard laptop with an NVIDIA GeForce card, be ready for it to fail.  Also, be ready to go to small claims court to resolve the issue.  Hewlett-Packard has not accepted responsibility for every defective notebook, nor will they.

For more information on the defect itself as well as Hewlett-Packard's attempts to cover up the defect, feel free to visit the forums at www.hplies.com.  It is incredibly helpful for those of you just starting to see the issue spring to life.