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May 1, 2008 05:02 PM

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Violation

Member
Joined: 05/01/2008

I am an HP MediaSmart EX475 customer but recently my Power Supply has gone faulty. I contacted HP to organise a repair/replacement under warranty and have received the WORST service I have ever had from such an organisation.

It turns out that HP don't stock their own product and currently have no method of repairing or replacing these servers when they develop a fault.

I know at least one other user with exactly the same problem and the full details can be found on this post:

http://www.wegotserved.co.uk/forums/index.php?showtopic=1652

 You will find that the level of support provided by HP is extremely poor and you will also discover that some people have been waiting for a replacement for over 28 days, with no indiciation that their server will be repaired at any point in the near future.

 Considering that HP market this product to be the perfect place to store you important, personal information with its backup potential, redundancy and scalability. They don't seem to have tackled the issue of sorting it out when you have a hardware failure.

To be fair, MediaSmart server is a great bit of kit WHEN IT WORKS. But after just 2 months of ownership, the power supply dies, thats when you find out just how bad the product becomes as it is near impossible to have fixed.

It would be good if someone from HP would take note of this. Feel free to contact me and I'll provide you with all my references numbers that I have been given so you can investigate my claims yourself. 

Discussion:    Add a Comment | Comments 1-4 of 4 | Latest Comment

Generic Member Avatar
Member
May 22, 2008 2:55 AM updated: May 22, 2008 2:56 AM

.............and after 5 months my EX470 PSU appears to have died overnight. Currently talking to HP Support who tell me that I should receive a call within the next 8 hours (it's 08:49 BST) and a replacement chassis will be sent out.

Interestingly, the rep told me not to give the unserviceable chassis to the courier until its replacement has been installed, commissioned and proved to be serviceable, and also remove all drives and caddies as only a chassis is sent.

Having had a very very poor experience with HP UK Support last year - resulting in £50 of M&S Vouchers and a free 6MP digital camera being sent to us - when my MediaVault fan failed and it took 10 weeks to get the issue resolved due to 'lack of spares' I'm not expecting good results this time around.  But I'll give them the benefit of the doubt until the UK Support Centre calls me back.

As an aside - is there a problem with the PSU generally? There do seem to be a growing number of these failures occurring. A device designed to run continuously should at least have a PSU designed so and resilient enough to run continuously for years - not 5 months!!

HP - you can do better than this.

Generic Member Avatar
Member
May 28, 2008 3:06 AM updated: May 28, 2008 3:07 AM

Following yet another chaser cal to HP UK Support, as they had yet again failed to return a promised call (from others in similar situations this appears to be standard practice), my case has been picked up by UK Customer Care. I assume this is progress.

However the 'progress' ends there. The UK Customer Support Team tell me it could be up to 8 weeks before a repair/replacement is made available. Therefore, for those of you in the UK and contemplating a purchase bear this warning in mind. If you suffer from a hardware failure (PSU/MOBO/Chassis type) then you may be off-line for that period and need to plan accordingly.

Generic Member Avatar
Member
May 28, 2008 2:22 PM

Out of the blue today, a courier arrived with a large box containing a replacement (I think repaired as against new) chassis.

Having been told only yesterday that there were no spares available, and that it could take 8 weeks to get one, this came as a very pleasant surprise.  Someone over in HP UK Customer Care seems to have got the message out to the Repair Centre and got things moving again.

It was a fraught few (thankfully - few) days but now I have plugged the drives in, got some form of update (no idea what actually got installed as the update was retired wasn't it?) and the server is currently whirring away to itself.

I'll give it a night to itself to settle down and see what happens. 

One question though.  The old and new units have Microsoft WHS Licence Certificates on them.....with different numbers.  So is there an issue here, or do we just ignore it?  This could of course be a problem as the OEM licence number on the case will now differ from the OEM licence stored in the registry.

Violation Avatar
Member
May 30, 2008 4:36 AM

Glad to hear you got your replacement too. I think with regards to the License numbers, it doesn't matter. As long as you have a valid license, there is no issue. HOWEVER, if you use the serial number and part number from the bottom of the unit, you should be able to re-register this unit with HP to yourself. As this contains your warranty period, it is important to have this on record.

I am under the firm belief that the Warranty period should start at a full 12 Months again seeing as these units have had to be replaced/repaired. Anything else would be unacceptable.

Discussion:    Add a Comment | Comments 1-4 of 4 | Latest Comment

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