Dragonware Computers

Three times in a row Dragonware replaced the motherboard only to have the new motherboard fail, with the exact sane error, with in a short period of time.. The first three times, the motherboard was still under warranty and a new board was ordered and installed for free. The fourth time, the motherboard had just barely passed the warranty period before it also failed with the exact same error. Dragonware Computers claimed that, although the problem was exactly the same as with the previous four (original and three replacements) motherboards, the fact that the warranty had expired meant that they had successfully repaired the problem and they charged me $175.73 for the repair. They also implied that the docking station I was using for that laptop was probably the cause of the successive failures of the motherboards they had installed. As you will see below, this was probably a deliberate attempt to use disinformation to get me to pay for a fourth motherboard since, by their own subsequent acknowledgement, they already knew that it was going to fail just as the other ones had. Desperate to get my laptop up and running, I paid them another $132.73 to again replace the motherboard and then tried using the laptop without the docking station, as they had suggested. Despite this precaution, the motherboard again failed with the exact same problem as the four previous boards. When I took it back in, they basically told me that, although the motherboard was still under warranty, there was no sense in returning it and ordering a new board since, as they told me then, there was a known defect in the motherboards for the HP Pavillion dv9000. If they knew that, why didn't they give me that information before they ordered the first motherboard rather than wait until 5 brand new mother boards had failed before telling me? At that point, I asked for a refund. They refunded the $132.73 I had paid for the fifth board, but refused to refund the original $175.73 on the grounds that, since the fourth motherboard barely survived the warranty period, it constituted a successful repair. This in spite of the fact that that board had failed for exactly the same reason that had caused me to bring the laptop in for repair in the first place...the problem they had said they could fix! In my opinion, barely surviving the warranty period before having the exact same problem occur again does not constitute a successful repair. After all, I brought the laptop to them to be repaired, not to see if one of five motherboards could survive the warranty period. In addition, by their own admission that there was no point in ordering a sixth motherboard because it was just going to fail again (see reference to this above), they were admitting that they had charged me for a repair despite having full knowledge that that repair had not, and would not, actually solve the original problem. The bottom line is they did not live up to their commitment to repair my laptop and should not have charged me anything, beyond the diagnostic fee, since they had failed to live up to their original commitment to repair my laptop.

The new one doesn't seem to be as good as the old one. They fixed the problem on my old machine and it was older than the one they sold me. They fixed the newer machine for free, but they did not give me the older one that was there. I suggested this, and I think the manager came out and said it was his opinion that the old machine they sold me was working fine. It is not working like it should be. However the performance of the one I have now is nowhere near the one I've had previously.

I had been there with a laptop issue a couple of years ago. I felt like they knew what they were talking about. This time he actually came back with my old video card that I was having some trouble with and he found the right driver for it. He offered to just solve the immediate problem without replacing some of the equipment for $40. I told him to go ahead and do the upgrades. He was very honest, which I liked about him. He had to take everything off the hard drive and reformat it to take it from a 32-bit to a 64- bit. He had the capacity and capability to do that. I had priced it online and they were equal to or cheaper so I felt good about the price. It did take a little longer than he told me it would originally. He had originally told me that if I brought it that morning, he could have it back to me that same day and that didn't happen. It was the end of the next day that I got it back. I was pretty pleased with the way it turned out so I would use them again.