Just another thing to remind family of when they inevitably ask why they shouldn’t just buy the cheapest printer/laptop/widget from HP.
“We are experiencing longer wait times” Yeah, because you intentionally made it that way to game your internal metrics.
I can’t wait for them to finally burn enough users that they finally get a clue and stop buying HP garbage, and the company can finally die from its decisions.
The line that really galls me is “generate warranty cost efficiencies” - i.e. make it really difficult to get through so that customers with defective products are incentivised to simply give up, rather than to claim on the warranty they were promised for their defective product.
I had a little argument with one of my parents about a certain Linus Tech Tips video that compared the customer support of certain pre-built PC sellers. They simulated a stick of RAM becoming slightly dislodged during shipping, preventing the computer from powering on. Then they got one of their less-versed employees on the line with the PC’s respective phone number. The guy at the desk at the computer store down the road solved it in 10 minutes, while Dell had the poor LTT employee getting whiplash from being transferred between every Indian call center worker with a pulse, while constantly being pestered about extended warranty and whatnot, for 45 minutes. I made the point that I would not buy from Dell after seeing the state of their customer support, but my parent did not seem to be able to imagine a customer support line that wasn’t outsourced to the other side of the planet.
Ironically one of the reasons I was buying macs in the mid to late aughts was the apple store combined with apple care. I knew that if there was anything I could not handle I just had to go there and it would be taken care of. I stopped doing macs when they reversed course when the apple stored told us power cord fraying was our fault and they would not fix/replace along with going from high powered machines with tons of ports to minimalist designs that got rid of everything but touchscreens (or so it felt).
As bad as they are in that way (and many others), I can only consider Dell or Lenovo for mainstream laptops. They are the only manufacturers, to my knowledge, that make service manuals readily available or at least easy to obtain.
If it’s not a terminal or expensive fault, I’d just rather fix it myself than deal with customer support anyway - even in warranty.
Where I am, it is the retailers problem to solve up to 2 years from purchase. This covers the terminal cases.
For desktops I’ll just build myself, and make a point to offer builds to friends & family in the market.
a customer support line that wasn’t outsourced to the other side of the planet
Onshore support is indeed a bloody rarity these days.
The only HP I deal with is at work, where I’m forced to because some high up idiot (who uses mac exclusively) made a decision and refuses to believe it was a bad one. (The bonus they were rewarded with after kinda reinforces their opinion)
Wild that when I do well in my job I maybe get a pat on the back but an executive does, well, literally anything that might be related to their job even if it’s bad and they get a huge bonus.
“I made things more efficient!” “Ok, that’s your job.”
“I bought some shitty printers and laid off a bunch of people.” “HOLY SHIT HERE’S SIX MILLION DOLLARS!!”
I had an issue a couple of years ago with an HP laptop where the USB-C port would stop working after a reboot. DSIM cleanup-image would temporarily fix it so it had to be software based. The warranty was only good for about another week when I first got in touch.
They did everything in their power to run that week out and tried getting me to send it in for repair that could take a month rather than fixing the issue. I finally found an obscure forum post that fixed it. Their support is absolute trash.
Just another thing to remind family of when they inevitably ask why they shouldn’t just buy the cheapest printer/laptop/widget from HP.
“We are experiencing longer wait times” Yeah, because you intentionally made it that way to game your internal metrics.
I can’t wait for them to finally burn enough users that they finally get a clue and stop buying HP garbage, and the company can finally die from its decisions.
The line that really galls me is “generate warranty cost efficiencies” - i.e. make it really difficult to get through so that customers with defective products are incentivised to simply give up, rather than to claim on the warranty they were promised for their defective product.
Absolute scumbags.
I had a little argument with one of my parents about a certain Linus Tech Tips video that compared the customer support of certain pre-built PC sellers. They simulated a stick of RAM becoming slightly dislodged during shipping, preventing the computer from powering on. Then they got one of their less-versed employees on the line with the PC’s respective phone number. The guy at the desk at the computer store down the road solved it in 10 minutes, while Dell had the poor LTT employee getting whiplash from being transferred between every Indian call center worker with a pulse, while constantly being pestered about extended warranty and whatnot, for 45 minutes. I made the point that I would not buy from Dell after seeing the state of their customer support, but my parent did not seem to be able to imagine a customer support line that wasn’t outsourced to the other side of the planet.
Ironically one of the reasons I was buying macs in the mid to late aughts was the apple store combined with apple care. I knew that if there was anything I could not handle I just had to go there and it would be taken care of. I stopped doing macs when they reversed course when the apple stored told us power cord fraying was our fault and they would not fix/replace along with going from high powered machines with tons of ports to minimalist designs that got rid of everything but touchscreens (or so it felt).
As bad as they are in that way (and many others), I can only consider Dell or Lenovo for mainstream laptops. They are the only manufacturers, to my knowledge, that make service manuals readily available or at least easy to obtain.
If it’s not a terminal or expensive fault, I’d just rather fix it myself than deal with customer support anyway - even in warranty.
Where I am, it is the retailers problem to solve up to 2 years from purchase. This covers the terminal cases.
For desktops I’ll just build myself, and make a point to offer builds to friends & family in the market.
Onshore support is indeed a bloody rarity these days.
The only HP I deal with is at work, where I’m forced to because some high up idiot (who uses mac exclusively) made a decision and refuses to believe it was a bad one. (The bonus they were rewarded with after kinda reinforces their opinion)
Wild that when I do well in my job I maybe get a pat on the back but an executive does, well, literally anything that might be related to their job even if it’s bad and they get a huge bonus.
“I made things more efficient!” “Ok, that’s your job.”
“I bought some shitty printers and laid off a bunch of people.” “HOLY SHIT HERE’S SIX MILLION DOLLARS!!”
I really wish I knew, then I’d actually be able to afford a house.
I had an issue a couple of years ago with an HP laptop where the USB-C port would stop working after a reboot. DSIM cleanup-image would temporarily fix it so it had to be software based. The warranty was only good for about another week when I first got in touch.
They did everything in their power to run that week out and tried getting me to send it in for repair that could take a month rather than fixing the issue. I finally found an obscure forum post that fixed it. Their support is absolute trash.