SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Fire / ignition

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20170809-3437A-2147398243. Severity: Incident, No Injury. Product: HP Spectre x360-13-4002dx HP Spectre x360-13-4002dx (Laptop computer HP Spectre x360-13-4002dx). Incident: I purchased a HP Spectre x360-13-40002dx August 2015. I use this laptop for business travel and presentations. Although the computer is 2 years old (out of warranty) it only has about 50 hours of computers use. Today, I started it up for a presentation and it died after about 2 minutes. I had borrow a computer from my client to continue with my presentation. When I returned home I tried starting the computer up again. It started but then died again 2 minutes later. It would not take a charge, charging lights did not go on. I then smelled an electrical burning smell. I removed the cover of the laptop and discovered that a portion of the motherboard had melted and burned in addition to a spot of the cover that burned plastic. I researched online and found at HP's own site dozens of customers with the same problem as I had. HP it seems did fix some of the customers laptops for free, when I called to report the issue all they could say is that I was out of the warranty period for the fix to be covered by HP. I could pay $700 to have it fixed (a new one costs about $1,000). This was not going to work for me. I might as well buy a new laptop (which I did. Not an HP). I am concerned with the number of times this has happened and the safety of these computers in people's homes. What happens if it happens at a business or home and noone is around to smell that the computer is burning and lights the business and home on fire?