Hewlett-Packard (HP) Customer Care makes me cry
I'm typing this post on a 5 year old Dell laptop. That's important to know. Why? Because just under 6 months ago I bought a Hewlett-Packard (HP) notebook, the DV9008TX, the super notebook designed to be the hub of your home's modern media center. Sounds nice on paper. Actually, in reality it was quite nice, until the DVD drive stopped working! It stopped working, it disappeared from explorer and from the device manager. It was like my HP notebook had traveled back in time, to a place where DVD's were a far off dream.
Please note, what follows is an extended rant. You have been warned.
My first port of call was HP "Customer Care". Advertised as available 24/7 on their website, it actually turns out the phone support is only available until 9pm in Australia. The local online support is even worse, only available during business hours. Contacting the world wide online support I'm given a few things to try to get it running again, reinstalling drivers, messing with regedit and all sorts of fun stuff. Eventually the world wide support tell me I should contact my local support team. Which I do. A few more calls, a few more online 'chats' and repeating the same series of 'fixes'. Still no change.
It's around this point that I'm referred to my local HP qualified repairer. I drop the notebook off, driving 40 mins there and 40 mins back in my lunch break. The repairer is only open 9am-5pm, Monday to Friday. Fan-f*^&king-tastic. My notebook is ready for pickup a week later, and again I drive 40 mins there and back, in my lunch break. The repairer replaced the entire DVD drive. I turn it on that night, and... it works!!
Turning it on one night later however, and things have taken a dramatic turn. It's back to it's previous non-working state. One hour on the phone to Customer Care and it's still not working. Another hour online with customer support (as by this time the phone support was unavailable - even though it was only 8pm!), and it's still not working.
This morning, 8 mins on the phone while a Customer Care guy reviews my case, I hang on the line, then the line goes dead. I'd like to think he didn't hang up on me, but I guess I'll never know. I quickly call back, and 20 mins later I'm told to call the repairer. Contacting the repairer leads to a "we'll call you back". Fortunately the repairer does call back, but the news isn't great. I have to wait for them to call me back on Monday, and will also have to wait and see whether or not HP will be footing the bill for a courier to pick up and return my notebook.
I'm hoping I'm close to a resolution, but I don't hold much hope. So far HP have proven to be a nightmare. HP Customer Care seem to be limited to "re-installing the driver" and "reviewing my case". Besides those two things, which admittedly, they do excel at, they haven't been much help at all. Hopefully this isn't some kind of stalling tactic and this gets sorted out before the warranty expires.
All in all, I can totally understand how this US soldier in Iraq feels!
"This is the HP 5510 all-in-one office printer," the soldier says. "It prints. It faxes. It scans. And it copies. It also does not work. Let's see how well it deals with my little friend here."
Luckily for my HP notebook I'm not Tony Montana. If anyone from HP actually reads this, please do something to fix my notebook! At this stage my next notebook will be either a Dell or and Apple MacBook Pro.
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4 Responses to “Hewlett-Packard (HP) Customer Care makes me cry”
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Be nice. Keep it clean. Stay on topic. No spam.
Hey SP,
Sorry to hear about your PC woes. Although my company drops the ball more times than we’d like, Dell *is* listening and working very hard to help customers whenever we can. Please let me know if you ever need any assistance with that five-year-old notebook that you’ve brought out of retirement. No promises, but we are here to listen.
Even though there is no doubt that the quality of the notebook computers that Hewlett Packard manufactures is reasonably good (though not excellent), as a brand new Hewlett Packard customer I can say with confidence that the entire experience of trying to buy a Hewlett Packard notebook computer was terrible.
A pathetic website filled with obsolete and incorrect information, lack of models to choose from and customize, and a completely unresponsive Direct Sales team are some of the obstacles that I had to experience while buying a Hewlett Packard notebook computer.
To read the full story, please visit http://hpindia.blogspot.com/.
John – My old Dell laptop is starting to show it’s age a bit but I have to say I’ve never had any problems with it that weren’t my own doing. It still works perfectly besides the USB port, and the only reason that’s not working is that I accidentally got the mouse tangle up in some other cables and it got yanked out at the wrong angle. If I can’t get this HP sorted I’m considering one of the Dell XPS laptops. They look very solid.
Amit – I hope you have more luck with your notebook than I’ve had with mine!
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