Update. Best Buy has become my new best friend. :)

Friday, 5/18, I called Best Buy on a whim just to see what they'd say about my order. The Geek Squad rep I talked to asked the name on my repair order and the phone number, never asking for the order number, etc. As soon as he pulled it up, before I had the chance to say anything else, he said, "Whoa... that's WAY too long. Yeah, we're going to do something about this. Hang on a second, let me grab Phil (the manager).."

Within three days, my laptop was replaced. :)

I bought my original machine because it was the only laptop they had in stock that had a hardware T&L video card for under $900. This Tuesday, 5/22, I got a Compaq V6000 series laptop with a bigger hard drive than my original machine, a thinner chassis, a bigger screen, and Vista Home Premium..

..and all for $50 less than I payed originally. So, I bought Guild Wars: Factions to go with my new evil-black laptop, something I've been wanting to do for a long, long time.

Thank you, Best Buy! Thanks, Geek Squad of Cape Girardeau, MO! You guys are my heroes. :)

My old machine was named REDY2ROK. This new one will be christened ROKSTEDY.



These are the facts.

My laptop needed repair. It's a Compaq V3015NR model, of the V3000 series. This March, for the second time, the connection between my laptop's screen and the main body went haywire somehow. What happened is that the screen's backlight would not come on, though the actual LCD panel works; if you point a bright light at the screen, you could see the pixels have color. So, it's not like the entire screen's broken, more likely there's just not a good connection in the power lead that goes from the laptop's main body (bottom) through the hinges and to the screen.

I took my laptop to my local Best Buy store. That's where I purchased it originally, on 9/11/06. I took it to their Geek Squad counter and had them send it off for warranty repair. (Remember, this is the second time I've done this for this same issue.) I was confident they'd have it shipped back to my home address, as I requested, in about 1-2 weeks when the repair was completed.

I shipped the laptop on March 20th of 2007. HP received the laptop on March 24, 2007, as evidenced by my laptop's order status on their CSO Status page (www.hp.com/go/csostatus). My HP repair order number is HBX706-01.

HP estimated a ship-out date of 3/29/2007.

As of this past Wednesday, May 9, 2007, more than 5 weeks later, I had not yet received my laptop.

I had made 3-4 calls over the intervening period to check on the status of the order. The last call I made, before the end of April 2007, they told me that screens were on backorder and that it would be another 1-2 weeks. That was about 2 weeks before May 9, 2007.

When I called May 9, 2007, I reached an American-sounding representative. He checked on the status of my order and informed me that it had shipped, and that I could expect it to arrive this Friday, May 11, 2007 via Fedex. The representative gave me the tracking number 924295207442 for the Fedex shipment. I was excited, and I believed him; I thought the backorder problem had been solved, my laptop fixed and shipped, and that it would arrive today.

When I got home at 5PM today, the laptop had not arrived. I went to Fedex.com and plugged my tracking number above in to check on the status of the package. (Fedex has a habit of requiring a signature for all deliveries, and it was possible that the deliveryman had rung our main doorbell, missed the sign by the door instructing visitors to ring the daycare's doorbell around the side of the house as well, and that the deliveryman had then left a note informing us the package was ready to deliver and we had missed a delivery attempt.)

This was the first time I had actually used the tracking number since receiving it by phone on Wednesday, May 9. When the results of the track loaded at fedex.com, they claimed the package's destination was Mount Shasta, California, which is not the same as my home address in Missouri. I started to suspect the rep I talked to Wed, May 9 gave me the wrong tracking number, probably as a mistake.

Just to check, I went to HP's CSO Status page again to check the status of my repair order. I reasoned that if they'd changed the status to Shipped, they might have the right tracking number on the results page that I could use.

HP's CSO Status page stated that my laptop was still at the repair center, had not shipped, but with an expected ship date of 3/29/2007. (This has not changed HP received the laptop on 3/24/2007.)

Now I'm confused. I called HP's service center, 800-474-6836. The representative there took my HP Repair Order number, and informed me that there was a backorder problem, and that the laptop was estimated to ship back to me on June 15th.

That's right. After having waited for more than 5 weeks for what was a 5-day repair previously, HP wants me to wait another month for my laptop to be repaired.

Here's the kicker: I'm still in college. I go to school at University of Maryland. I don't live in Maryland, I live in Missouri; therefore, I am enrolled in online classes exclusively. Not having my laptop is impeding my ability to take college classes. And, according to HP, I won't have my laptop for another month.

What do you think I should do? What would YOU do, if it was your laptop?