(OT?) Buying new calculators from "third party sellers" (aka: calculator non-warranty) Message #1 Posted by Eduardo Duenez on 26 Apr 2012, 4:59 p.m.
I just had a very strange (and unpleasant) experience with HP "product support".
Last May I bought a (brand new in sealed package) 30b to flash it into a 34s. For various reasons I didn't get around to flashing it, though I did play with the 30b as a financial.
(I must also note that the keyboard of the old 30b was pretty poor from day 1, with quite a few keys that did not click at all... They were very "flat". I did not want that keyboard for the 34s. Last month I decided I was "ready to flash", but thought I'd buy a second 30b in order to keep the original one with its original ROM and bad keyboard. A couple of weeks ago I received the new calculator. It's now a happy 34s.)
The strange thing is, the old calculator seems to have just died a spontaneous death. It's plain dead (tried changing batteries, resetting, etc. Nothing. It doesn't have have the excuse of a re-flashing gone bad.)
Assuming the calculator was under warranty (since it was bought under a year ago), I called HP. I was told that the calculator had been manufactured in 2010, and since I bought it through an "unauthorized reseller" (namely a third-party seller in Amazon), its warranty has expired and I'm S.O.L.. I made some sarcastic comment about my idiocy and hung out on the representative rather than breaking into expletives. I mentally cursed my couple-dozen strong HP calculator collection. (Then again, I know that new HP <> old HP = deceased HP.)
I had no idea that new-in-the-box electronics (with a dated receipt) could be sold effectively without warranty, at least not without some *very clear* warning to that effect. The serial was 4CY0240... Is that manufactured the 24th week of 2010? Then the calculator was practically out of warranty when I bought it!
Is this situation "common knowledge" among calculator buyers? I cannot wrap my head around this!
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