On Saturday I sent emails to the corporate executives at HP. I received a couple of out of office auto replies giving phone numbers in the event of an emergency. I have not used them yet. Since it was Saturday and a holiday weekend I was going to wait until Monday (today) before I did anything else.
10:59 am CDT I got a call from HP. Jeff (I’m not going to post his last name or phone number at this time) in Denver was very polite and apologetic. He said he would escalate my problem to an executive case manager. Again I asked if they could send me a new computer. I was told that they didn’t have them sitting on a shelf, that they had to be built. I’m pretty sure they could get their hands on one if they wanted to. Hell, I would wait for one to be built since I have to wait for this one to be fixed. I just want one that works. Aside from not replacing my computer Jeff seemed to be working with me. He thanked me for my email and said that if they don’t know they are broken they can’t fix them. I have only been telling everyone at HP tech support that it doesn’t work for the last week but I guess that isn’t the same. He sounded like he was going to take care of this.
At 11:38 am CDT I got a call from “Ned”. Ned had a thick middle eastern accent and the number he called from was an 800 number. The same number all the other tech support people had called from. Ned told me he was going to send me a box and I should put the tower in it and return it to HP. He said I would have the box tomorrow. Once HP received the tower it would be three days to fix it and then they would overnight it back to me. He said not to include any cables. I asked again if they could just ship me a new computer and again was told that was not an option. I feel like I am in the movie Groundhog Day.
Here is the problem with the outsourced tech support. Ned was nice enough but because of his heavy accent I had a hard time understanding him. Because of that I assume he has a hard time understanding me. Thus I can’t imagine that he really knows what is going on with my computer. He said he was going to ship the box to Mr. A. Tabob and I told him there was no one here with that name and gave him my full name again. At this point my full name, address, email address, ss#, birth weight and hair color of my first born should all be in my file.
Because of Ned’s accent I can’t hear any sincerity. It isn’t Ned’s fault, he may very well be sincere and might really care that I am having so much trouble with his company’s product but because his accent doesn’t allow for the same intonation let alone pronunciation I can’t hear it. The language barrier really is a barrier. Even if we are both speaking English. The guy must be smart since he has learned at least two languages, hell I can only ask for a beer or where the bathroom is in Spanish so props to him for that. But when I have to suspend disbelief about his name it doesn’t set the stage for trust.
I don’t have any expectations that this will resolve my problem. I understand a computer has to be repaired at least three times or they must receive a pound of flesh before they will replace it.
That’s IT! The fact that the Anglicized name is probably not the rep’s real name sets the stage for distrust. Great observation!
Ned is not mid east. at all. He is white as a ghost. Ned is his real name. Ned is not out sourced he is from Canada. H.P is an international company and not an American company. He is probably one of the top guys there. I am gald you got your computer replaced. It was Jeff that caused all the confusion. The Palo Alto guys are not really case managers, there corp. They do things without going through the system. At one time you called the CM’s (more then likely because Palo Alto failed to give you there number or you got numbers mixed up because they are thousands of them) and there was no record of the case. (Palo Alto doesn’t make case numbers) I know this happend because you called me once when you shouldn’t have.
Why does hp have so many departments? Plain and simple, too many people don’t know how to use a computer and call with software issues demanding repairs and refunds. This is not what happend to you I know, thats why we replaced it. We have to make sure there actually is something wrong before a replacement can be done.
If the system is under 30 days old a replacement is made instantly.
Cost of repairs can be more expensive then some of our systems. We are not trying to make it difficult.
H.P computers do suck. Their software is even worse. There service is better then any company I ever delt with myself. I know it must be frusterating that we don’t just take back or replace everyones computer after they used it for 5 months.