Hewlett-Packard (HP) Sucks Part 2
Ah it was tough coming to work today, what with the rest of the world being on holiday and all…but my three weeks of leave will be coming up in April and I am sure that will be well worth the wait. I saw that India wasn’t on holiday today either, when, on my arrival at the office, I discovered this little doozie in my inbox:
After my recent HP rant, I headed straight to the online survey page and completed the survey rather swiftly. I did, however, spend a bit more time adding some bells and whistles (it is Christmas after all!) to the “Additional Comments” Section. They go a little something like this…
For those of you who *really* care, I have included my “Additional Comments”:
You guys are pretty smart: You don’t include a “Super-duper Dissatisfied” radio button option because, given the opportunity, that would be the one that I would have chosen for all but one of your questions listed above.
I am so appalled at how poor your customer service in India is. They waste your time asking you to repeat your name and telephone number several times because they either can’t understand your accent or they cannot understand English. Then they put you on hold for ridiculously long periods to time so they can find out answers to some of the most fundamental hardware and software questions known to man!
For the record, I lodged my complaint with an Australian (Anthony), in your Melbourne head office as I was desperate to not have to deal with India and he was very helpful – hence my being “Very Satisfied” with that aspect of the process. Unfortunately he told me that my complaint would be directed to India – so, after experiencing a glimmer of hope, I realised I was back to square one.
“Hari Unnikrishnan” was assigned my complaint and he didn’t bother getting back to me at all. Apparently your “Lodged Complaint Response Time” (according to the lovely Anthony) is 6 to 8 hours. Well after three days of trying to reach him because he hadn’t bothered to make contact, he fobbed me off to some woman with a message to give to me – basically saying that they couldn’t help me. I wanted to speak to Hari and I was blocked. I find that incredibly rude and unprofessional. The fact that HP does not allow its customers the ability to escalate a problem in the event of the “lower level” clerks not being able to assist you is shocking.
The above is an abridged version of my very unhappy, unhelpful and superbly frustrating experience with HP customer care. For the whole bang-shoot you can toodle over to my weblog (http://www.footloosemoose.com/sam_wp/?p=305) where you can, along with the general worldwide public, read about the really juicy details of this incident.
In closing, I would like to say that I have only ever used HP products and, other than a couple of busted touch pads (and I can be rough!), they have always served me well. So it is a pity that the people you have representing your customer care division have gone right ahead and ruined the whole “HP Experience” for me. As a result, I will not purchase another HP product for that very reason and I will encourage my friends and family to do the same. I simply do not care for a repeat of the above experience and would not inflict it on anyone I know.
By the way, you may want to proof-read your survey: “Overall how satisfied were you with the way in which HP handle your Complaint” – there should be a “d” at the end of “handle” to make it grammatically correct. Furthermore, it may be a good idea to not have the word “Errors:” in red at the top of the survey page. Though I must say I am rather amused at the sheer irony of it.
So having written the above I attempt to submit the stupid survey. I press submit and the page just hangs – no confirmation page, nothing! Instead I get diverted back to my original completed survey page. This really is in true HP style, I think to myself. Irritated that I made the effort to fill in their stupid survey and to tell them how much they suck, I fire off the following email response to aucustomerexperience@hp.com:
From: Samantha *****
To: aucustomerexperience@hp.com
Re: HP Customer Survey
To Whom it May Concern
Your survey isn’t working properly. When you press “Submit” there is no “confirmation of receipt” page confirming that my survey has, in fact, been sent / received. Can you please confirm whether or not you have, in fact, received my feedback, as I really, really would like you to hear what I have to say.
Regards
Sam
So now I would be interested to know what, if anything, will come of this. I wonder if they will even grace my last email with a response – would be strange for them to start treating their customers properly now…
UPDATE:
Shockingly unexpected surprise: It is now 7 February 2008 and I haven’t heard anything from HP Customer Service since 27 December 2007 – nothing about my survey feedback nor about my email explaining to them that, just like their attitude to customer service, their survey was stuffed. Perhaps it is all an evil plot: if the survey doesn’t work then they don’t get the negative feedback that, no doubt, would be coming thick and fast. So they may actually be thinking that they are doing a good job because nobody is complaining…wouldn’t put it past them.
Bonus: If my elusive friend “Hari Unnikrishnan” ever performs an ego search or a future employer wants to find out a bit about him on Google…guess what ranks as number 1:
THE END
Oh you poor thing. I can’t begin to imagine the frustration. I had a run in with Symantec when they send me the wrong version of an Antivirus package I ordered; eventually they thought it was resolved by telling me to throw the product they’d sent me in the bin and use the refund they’d given me to “try again”…
Please keep us all posted; we’ve missed your blogging, rants and otherwise.
Best wishes,
Morgen Carson
(I took over from your Teaching Fellow position @ Bond)
Hey Morgan. Yeah I absolutely remember you! Good old Bond – I must say I really miss it. It is high time I get onto some more positive blogging material…have a couple of recipes coming up and some political view-points on South Africa’s newly-proposed president (though that may not exactly be positive!). My New Years resolution is to blog more frequently…just gotta find the time!! Hope you are well :)
I am; thanks for the reply. My New Year’s resolution is to start a blog; so you’re ahead of me!
I hope you and yours had a wonderful Christmas and are looking forward to the New Year with zeal.
Morgen
Ok have Quality photo issues with my printer to make a long story short I’ll just tell you how my wonderful HP calls to INDIA were! (SELL THEM IN INDIA IF YOU CAN’T HAVE CUSTOMER SERVICE HERE = AMERICA I REPEAT INDIAMEXICANAMERICA.
Let’s see was on phone with Wangphungme last night 3/9/08 the server was down for remote support. So I started same headache tonight still got jackasses on phone his name was Wangphunuaroundincircles 3/10/08 after repeated attempts to get through his thick head there were no printing on paper issues kept asking me how do they print ???? .I said I’M NOT HAVING PRINTING PROBLEMS !!!!!!! I said there’s poor
Quality when you click on anypicture.jpg that I scanned what do I get read above again (kept asking me how do they print????)
Then I get the OL did you try this SIR !!! I did every combination in the book all the different pixel settings etc what’s he do has me do it all over again when told him I did that already And tried on vista and XP same problems and tried on different monitor and pc see if was a monitor issue NOPE !…. if I mess up my writing here it’s because I’m on edge and pissed about things in America ! and how you can sell here but hire some poor slobs in different countries because your to cheap to pay Americans !!!! MORE THAN $5.75 AND HOUR ! …Back to my story lol they give me support service ticket number all that JAZZ after transferring me to hardware support for another song and dance. YES I had to repeat all my problems ALL OVER AGAIN TO THIS GUY !.. then I was granted (AFTER AND HOUR ROUGHLY) A replacement refurbished unit mind you (This guy never asked my name asked for credit card number in case I don’t return old printer but approved the card ? . WAIT IT GETS BETTER ! we almost finish everything gave him my email etc told him send me support ticket
Receipt order number etc I’m done I hang up !!!… few mins later I check my email smack myself in the head #&^%*&^#$ who the hell’s name is this ….. Here we go I call up customer service again I go through the lame handicapped recording prompts I get someone 10 mins or so they give me another number to call to fix name on shipment gave order number etc and name took her another 5 mins to comprehend my name I had to yell a 3rd time each letter in fanetics in other words like Tom would be T like Tom O for Oscar & M for Mary etc .I’m tired that’s all I’m writing Excuse my punctuation I’m frustrated and can’t think straight . Signed Phantx
I was running a search on “HP sucks” and I like you mentioned, I get a lot of hits, but I’m not a customer of HP. I was checking if the hits are still high on the keywords :P
Well, my friend wanted to buy a laptop and EVERYONE suggested HP. That was mainly for the price, the bundled gift they offered for new year and few “fancy” things. But, I was adamant and asked her to choose Dell. Fortunately, she has bought it and very satisfied with it. I was there from the ordering of the machine online, to the last minute changes regarding the configuration and even when it was delivered. She’s very happy with it.
Many wonder why she ended up paying so much for a machine where HP would give it for much less. They failed to notice that the configuration is WAY better than what HP offered then and people don’t see that they are actually paying for the genuine software! While Dell came with Vista Home edition, HP gave the Vista Basic edition. Come on! Who actually works with Vista Basic??
The main reason I’m asking people to stay away from HP, is because of the customer support. I’m from India and I know how frustrated you guys must be. Even we face these boneheads when we have technical issues and most of the time, you know better than them.
I hope I don’t get flamed just for mentioning that I’m from India :-|