HP Snubs Customers

For the past 30 years I have supported HP in a big way. In fact, I am directly responsible for well over 200,000 PC sales for HP to AOL in 2000-2003 and several other large scale customers. I chose HP because they used to be a very reputable company, they were extremely conscientious about the products they manufactured and above all they gave extraordinary customer support and took affirmative action on customer input. Their PCs were not the cheapest but their products and support more than made up for the difference. Over the past few years, since the take over of Compaq, this has all changed very drastically. Case in point? You can look in this forum alone at all the complaints with HP's India Technical Support, with Power and other related infant mortality issues with HP PCs and other products. My own experience with the last 4 HP computers I've purchased over the past 16 months for home/business use, each one had a problem requiring HP repair and one of them had to be advance replaced. The latest one I purchased in May 2009 had intermittent power problems from day one until it finally died a couple months later and would not boot. It's bad enough to spend $1,000.00 or more on a product and have trouble with it out of the box. Even worse is when you have to deal with substandard support on that product. For $1,000.00 price tag, I should be getting someone to my home to fix the problem or take the problem away and provide me with a replacement, at least until mine can be returned. But, I digress. After a couple week enjoying my interfacing with the India technical support over chat, and having them send a power supply and provide other assistance that was never even close to solving the problem, I was finally promised an advanced replacement by their tech support. Since I used this PC for supporting my business from home, it was critical to me and I expressed my sincere thanks to the tech and his supervisor. I thought HP was showing concern for my problem and had wanted to show me in a tangible way that they were concerned with all the troubles I've had with their PC. WRONG!! After getting off the chat support, I was then sent an email indicating that an empty box would be sent to me so that I may return my unit for repair and wait 8-11 days before getting my PC again. Apparently, now they are coached to say whatever is necessary to get themselves off of a difficult trouble call so that they might be able to help another customer. Pissing me off was just part of providing good support to someone else. I called the management office that was in charge of the support group I had just spoken with and they did confirm the chat dialogue I had with the tech and that he did, in fact, promise to send an advance replacement, but they said he was not authorized to do this. It was basically "Tough luck". (So what happened to your word being your bond? Is this ancient myth nowadays?) I was fine with this, but in speaking with a supervisor about it and trying to bring to his attention what his techs were telling me (and who knows how many others), instead of being grateful and interested he was completely rude and continued to spout company rules about my replacement, but offered no help. I know everyone has a bad day but he went out of his way to attempt to show some sort of superiority with me and not answering any questions I asked. Forget trying to explain that I was just attempting to identify a problem with what the tech support had done, he wasn't listening. So, I asked how to reach tech support again because I was transferred to that HP office from another number I had called. He refused to even give that to me. WTF, was this Romper Room crap I was dealing with now with Tier 2 HP support? I felt like I was dealing with children and all I was trying to do was inform them of the issue I had just experienced and finally to get a phone number to contact HP people that might be interested in this. This supervisor was unapologetic about the problem and went out of his way to insure he did not hear anything I said and that I did not get an ounce of support from him. His childish rudeness and "tough luck" attitude forced me to asked for his manager, which he also refused to provide. So, I wrote to HP's corporate office about the problems I had experienced. Surprisingly, the girl who contacted me (Sheri) had the same attitude as everyone else I spoke with. It was clear that her intent was to protect HP at all costs and to minimize any out of pocket expenses that might be associated with helping me get my PC rather than insuring my happiness or even apologizing for the trouble I had experienced. I almost wish they had not contacted me, because I spent over a week on the phone with her helping her identify HP internal problems. I thought she was calling to make sure I got my PC repaired and returned to me as soon as possible. Instead, I spent a lot of my personal time helping her weed out some bad people. In the end, this would be good, but she also promised to expedite my repairs and I continued to wait the full (8-11 days) time for my repair. When I expressed that her office had done nothing to help me, she dumbfoundedly had nothing further to offer, not even an apology for the trouble I had experienced. She was obviously more interested in locating problems within her organization than righting any of the immediate wrongs that were done to me. She used me, and it was clear to me now that HP will do nothing further if it costs them a single penny to do so. My latest HP PC was purchase May 2nd, just weeks before the deadline for Microsoft's complimentary upgrade to Windows 7. HP would not offer this upgrade or any other tangible apology for the troubles I had experienced with their PCs or their organization. Years ago they would have offered me free upgrades at their expense for all of the PCs I had purchased from them that had experienced anything other than perfect performance and up-time. HP's support now is where Dell's support was several years ago, TERRIBLE and getting WORSE! HP doesn't care about customers or treating them with due respect, and they don't appear to realize what it is that is funding their paychecks. Once they have your money, "Tough Luck". They can speak with you and deal with you in any manner they feel appropriate for them personally. It will be a complete shock to them if/when they start losing market share. Let this be a warning... Don't buy from them! If you need proof, just search this forum or look for HP support complaints online. Their manufacturing and quality assurance departments have been compromised and they are putting out complete junk now. Worse than this, they are not supporting the junk with the type of support that they should be and they simply don't care because they have your money. Save yourself the heartache.