How HP ruined my day

Once upon a time, HP bought Compaq. The CEO that thought this was a good idea is now long gone. But that's another story...

Around this time, I finally got fed up and tossed my massive desktop PC in favour of a small, sexy laptop. Laptops and cell phones seem to be the one of the few things in life that everyone desires a smaller version.

A few months before these transactions however, a small Lithium ion cell was manufactured in Korea. It was then sent to China for "further processing" which I assume means packaging and labelling with serial numbers.

Fast forward a year, it has been discovered that some of these batteries have a heat problem. Something about overheating and causing a safety hazard. Makes one think that somewhere out there, someone's crotch has been burned pretty damn bad.

HP issued a recall. They informed the whole damn world that there was a problem with batteries manufactured in the 4 months preceding my laptop purchase, and the problem is associated with my specific model of laptop.

Their website asked for two numbers. A laptop serial number and a battery serial number.

After ripping out my laptop battery I managed to enter the two numbers into their crap website. Crap is an understatement, as it had a second input box so you can retype the battery serial number in case you fucked it up the first time. Seems like they don't expect people to just copy paste the damn serial number and void all advantages of the stupid second input box. I don't know who invented this bullshit, but it seems to me if you think a user is out to lunch, don't verify their input with their input!

After submitting the form, the website simply stated that I didn't have the faulty batteries and my life was going to be just peachy. This after everything else on the site said I was probably going to burn the house down using the battery.

I checked my serial numbers. The battery serial was a long sequence of numbers and letters with a dash shoved in it. Were those zeros or O's? Does this site even want the dash there? Does it even validate that the number represents a battery?

I tested the site by entering a bogus laptop serial. HP replied correctly with an error. Then I shoved in my real laptop ID along with "HPCANEATSHIT" as my battery serial.

The website replied as politely as before, saying that my battery wasn't going to explode - either HP had made a battery that had a serial number of "HPCANEATSHIT" or they employ serious fucking morons to maintain their recall websites.

Unsure if the website wanted a dash in the input, or if those zeros were actually zeros, I realized I had to enter every combo of potential battery serials to be sure mine wasn't on the recall list. So I did this, wasting another chunk of my evaporating life at the HP recall website.

But don't worry. The battery is fine. The house won't burn down. My testicles won't fry themselves to an expensive mess of plastic and metal.

Even if this may be true (I believe it like I believe David Beckham isn't gay) HP can still reimburse me for doing some quality testing for its garbage website. Does it even do an hour of quality assurance for its websites? An even $100 and I won't sue for harassment. Yes, harassment. HP may as well be phoning me on the hour and telling me they put a bomb in the building, then calling back minutes later and saying they're just fucking around.

Fuck you Hewlett-Packard.