Posts Tagged ‘Computers’
Kilroy says: HP Customer Care sucks out loud
Written by Kilroy
Wednesday, 27 May 2009 08:19
14 Comments

(Editor's note: this post may appear lengthy, but it is well written and well worth a couple of minutes to read.)

If you’re a Hewlett-Packard fan, then I‘m sorry. Actually, no I’m not. If you’re a fan of this company, then I suggest you get therapy, because you’re paying big bucks to have the corporate giant abuse you.

ATTENTION A.D.D. SUFFERERS: Now, for those of you with a short attention span, I’ll cut right to the chase: HP sucks out loud…or at least their tech support does. If you’re considering calling them for help, you’d better know a good hair implant surgeon (we call ‘em rug doctors). You’d also better have deep pockets. Now for the rest of you overachievers, I’d like to puke out my sad story for your thoughtful consideration. It’s a long story, but well worth the read.

It all started last week when I contacted HP customer care (an oxymoron if ever there was one). For it seems like every time I call HP with a problem, their tech guys would rather sell me some piece of equipment I don’t need rather than solve my actual problem, which brings me to my latest experience with HP Customer Care.

Anyway, I contacted HP last week to solve a problem with my computer’s cooling fan running continuously and to address my processor’s sluggish performance. The first thing my tech guy (who I’ll call Habib) asked me was how long I was running the computer. I replied, “I’m running the little sucker all day, as I use it for my business.”

Habib then said that if I was going to be running it like that all the time, I needed to purchase a “chill mat” to facilitate cooling of the unit, which was overheating due to my excessive use. Funny, I thought; it didn’t used to do that as a newspaper editor (yes, the "Kilroy Times"), and believe me, I was running that laptop 24/7 back then. But okay, he’s a professional, right? I’m sure he knows better than I do. So, I purchased a chill mat from Habib. Next, my fearless tech guy went to work on my sluggish processor performance. He began with the usual things, like cleaning up temporary files, etc. When he finished, he said I should see a difference in performance. When I didn’t, he suggested I upgrade my RAM from one Gig to two. I’d been thinking about that for some time, anyway. Perhaps he was right. I am using more programs now. “How much for the upgrade,” I asked. “$130” was Habib’s reply. That seemed like a lot of money to me, but if it would solve my problem, it was worth it. Reluctantly, I agreed to follow Habib’s suggestions and ordered the RAM upgrade as well. He even offered to help me install it over the phone. Wow! Now that’s customer care, I thought to myself.

So, after waiting about three days, the RAM arrived, along with my $30 high quality molded plastic chill mat. I was ecstatic. Who knew what wonders that lay ahead for me in computing, now that my chill mat and RAM upgrade had arrived. With sweat on my upper lip, I greedily unwrapped my chill mat, booted up my computer, and plugged in the new  mat. Almost as soon as I began performing some operations with my computer, my cooling fan kicked on, and remained on, until I shut the laptop down later that evening. I thought this to be strange, since my expert computer tech, Habib, had instructed me that my “made in China” chill mat would solve that problem.

But wait; it gets better. After a bit of investigating on my own, I realized that my “D” drive was almost completely full. My “C” drive wasn’t much better, with only about 8 percent of its memory available. I knew that couldn’t be right (I’ve got 80 Gigs in there). I decided that I wasn’t going to call Habib back again. If I wanted this fixed, I was going to have to do this myself. So I began transferring all my multimedia files to an external 500 Gig hard drive. Just to make sure, I also cleaned out my word documents. This action brought my available space on “C” up to 12 percent. Rats! Not even enough space to run my defragment operation. I would have to find another solution.

Next, I was going to install the RAM, but before I could do that, Habib called again and asked if I received the RAM upgrade, etc. I told him I did, but that I also found my “D” and “C” drives were clogged up and could he please fix that before dealing with the RAM. “Yes, of course. No problem,” replied Habib.

So, Habib proceeded to clean up my “D” drive. It is now 97 percent free, for which I say, “Thank you Habib!” Habib then deftly guided me through the RAM installation. This involved removing an access cover and taking out two RAM chips from my laptop. Following that, Habib asked me to install the single upgrade chip into my laptop. After doing so, we booted up my computer, which Habib was controlling remotely from his cubical in India. He asked me if I thought the computer was faster. I told him I wasn’t so sure it was. So he opened a few programs and insisted my laptop was responding much better now. That ended our session for that day. But, Habib was going to call me in two days and clean up my “C” drive. I couldn’t wait. My computer was going to be super-fast when Habib finished with it…or so I thought.

The next two days were marked by escalating frustration as my computer continued to run like the Microsoft piece of crap that it is. I knew something was up, so I went back and inspected the packing slip on the box which contained the RAM upgrade from HP. To my confusion, it read, “1 GB PC 2700 SODIMM.” Then I remembered I had taken out two chips and replaced them with the single chip for my alleged 2GB upgrade. Hmmmm…Checking the old chips, I found that they were 512MB each. Hey, that’s 1GB of RAM. And what I replaced them with was (get this) one 1GB of RAM. The difference? My 1GB of RAM was now on a single chip instead of divided between two. To be sure, I checked the BIOS and sure enough it read “1024MB” or 1GB of RAM.  Now that’s what I call and “upgrade.” Thanks HP!

When Habib called to do the clean up on my “C” drive I told him what I had found. He balked slightly at first, but then when I cornered him with my impeccable logic, he had to agree that I hadn’t upgraded a damn thing. Then I said, “So, what about my 'C' drive?” Habib replied that after extensive analysis of my “C” drive data, he had concluded that my Halo for PC game was what was hogging my “C” drive resources and that if I would remove that program I would see a big improvement in performance. He also suggested I purchase an external hard drive. He didn’t know that I was already running a 500GB external with my laptop. At this point, I was like, “whatever Habib.” It was plain to me that he was more interested in selling me hardware I didn’t need than he was in fixing my computer. In any case, there’s no way in hell that game was hogging 80GB of disk space. But since Habib wasn’t going to do anything else, other than take down my credit card number, I redirected the conversation back to the whole RAM upgrade problem, which Habib had created. I told him that either HP needed to send me another chip free of charge for my trouble, or they were going to have to take the new chip back and give me a refund. Habib’s response was text book. “I don’t have the authority to do that,” he said. So I told our tech-support-wanna-be that if he didn’t have the authority, he needed to find someone who did. He put me on hold for about 10 minutes while he tried unsuccessfully to get his supervisor. He then told me that he’d transfer me to sales, and they would refund my money. After another ten minute wait, Habib came back on the line and said he couldn’t transfer my call, but that he could give me a phone number for sales, and I could call them myself for the refund. In all of this, I don’t think I got so much as an apology from Habib, much less compensation from HP for my trouble. Did I tell you this is a service I’m paying for? That’s right. I have extended warranty coverage through HP for just this sort of thing. What did I get for it? Many wasted hours on the phone over the course of about a week, talking with someone who didn’t know what the hell they were doing. It was the blind leading the blind. I also spent $171 on items I didn’t need.

Now that’s what I call customer care.  Once again, thanks for nothing, HP.  I’ll never purchase another thing from your crap company EVER again. I won’t be extending my warranty (AGAIN!), and I won’t be calling you for customer care anymore either. Nor will I be purchasing another one of your laptops. I’ll spend my $1200 dollars somewhere else…like Apple.

 
AT&Evil
Written by Troglodad
Thursday, 06 March 2008 17:34
4 Comments

AT&T has been in the news a lot lately. And not in a good light.

For those of you that are tech savvy, you probably are thinking of the iPhone debacle. That’s where Apple and AT&T formed an agreement that iPhones could only be used with AT&T (in the U.S.). If you buy one, it comes "locked" and can only be "unlocked" with an AT&T Sim card.

Interestingly, tech heads out there in the world quickly figured out how to unlock the phones so they could be used with any service. Apple/AT&T got mad and released an "update" that then relocked the phones. The Techheads revolted, and again, they figured out how to unlock the phones. Once more, AT&T/Apple struck, releasing a third update that this time "bricked" the phones- rendered them totally useless, unless you get AT&T to unbrick. Not to be outdone, the techheads then figured out how to revert the phones to the first unpatched versions.

You might also have heard recently of a change in AT&T Yahoo’s user license agreement. It basically says that if you complain too much about AT&T, they reserve the right to deny you service. So, if I had posted this article using AT&T Yahoo, I’d have problems.

In all fairness, I should point out that AT&T isn’t really AT&T. Rather, AT&T Long Distance was bought out by SBC-Ameritech, who then decided to start using the good name of AT&T to trick folks into trusting them. The AT&T corporation is the "holding agent" for at least four divisions; the former Ameritech phone company, AT&T Long distance, the former SBC Communications and Cingular cellular service. Somewhere in there is also the SBC Yahoo internet service provider.

So we’re not dealing with your mom and dad’s AT&T.

The main reason though that I’m venting today about AT&Evil, is their abysmal customer service. I think they may just be worse than the dot-headed Hindus of Dell, or Hewlett Packard’s computer-prompt reading customer service chimps.

Earlier this year, I was having some problems with my home phone. It was kind of staticky, then it just went out completely. I called AT&T and they sent out a tech, who reported that vines growing along the fence line behind my property had damaged the AT&T line running to my utility pole.

Although I’d never heard of this before, a friend of mine who lives across town had the exact same problem several months later- only the vines cut out his DSL service.

After several months of adequate service, I noticed that my DSL connection kept getting dropped. I was repeatedly kicked off Xbox Live, and even my internet connection with my PC seemed slow and also repeatedly failed. At first I thought the problem was due to the wireless router I used to share my DSL line between my PC and Xbox 360. However, bypassing the router and plugging directly into the Siemens MODEM SBC Yahoo had supplied me when I signed up for DSL service did not improve things. On one night, in a less-than-three hour period, my connection was dropped 7 times. I was mad enough to throw my Xbox out the window.

So I called AT&T, and complained. They did the normal Customer Service Chimp routine, reading me troubleshooting tips that sounded remarkably like the ones on the AT&T website. I kept chanting over and over that I had already done the steps, could someone please come out. Finally, the CSC tells me they'll run a check on my line. He comes back and reports there's static on my line, so they'll have to send a tech out.

Guy comes out, checks the box on the back of the house, shows me where the test jack is, and reports that my line seems fine. I point out that my connection speed is half what it used to be. Conveniently, he runs a test and it comes back fine. So he insists that the problem is inside the house and asks to check my modem jack. I let him in, he runs some tests, and again, all seems well. I tell him that my connection problems are sporadic, but it goes right over his head. Finally, he suggests that I might have a problem with my lines in the house- and offers me this little kernal of wisdom:

"The jacks you never use are the ones that give you the most trouble."

Yeah, and this is the sound of my one hand smacking some sense into you…

All remains the norm- periodic drops included- until Monday night. The phone chirps once- like a half-ring- then goes dead. The next morning, I realize the phone is DEAD. KAPUTT. No dial tone.

I go around the house and unplug all the phones and DSL filters. I plug one line back in. Nothing. I check the modem's jack- sure enough, I still have a good DSL connection. Baffling.

At work I call to report the problem. The CS Chimps again start reading me prompts. I keep interrupting, telling them I've done all that. Finally, they agree to send someone out, and that it will take awhile, but they'll have someone out to the house by no later than close of business the next day.

When no one showed up, I unplugged everything this time. I even took apart a couple of jacks to make sure no liquid metal had been inadvertently poured into the jacks. Nope, all clear. I went out back- in the rain- and checked the phone box test port. Nothing. Clearly, the problem wasn't in my house- it was somewhere up the line.

So, after the third night with no phone, I call in again. This time I'm pretty pissed. I get yet another CSC- a sassy one at that- who tells me that as soon as a tech is available, they'll come out. I advise her that the problem is not in my house- that I checked the box out back and there's no dial tone. Did I unplug my DSL? Yes. Did I unplug my computer from the electrical outlet?

CSE representative standing by. ?!

Yes, it seems that the CSC thinks that even though no wire connects the PC to the phone lines, electricity could magically fly across the room and enter their system. At that point I could have reached across a counter and strangled someone. I ask for her name and supervisor.

Short wait.

Superviser comes on. I recap the problem, and my efforts, including my test at the phone box- AS THE TECH SHOWED ME TO. I point out that the last thing I want to hear is that I have to unplug my computer from an electrical outlet when it isn't even connected to the phone lines. I also remark on her employee for sounding like a chimp reading prompts off a screen.

I get a half-hearted apology and am assured that first thing in the morning, the supervisor will make sure that someone comes out- that all I should have had to say was that I tested at the box and nothing worked.

Of course, it's 3:15 PM as I start writing this email, and guess what? No phone service.

By 3:25 (I had to stop several times to answer phones at work) I get a call from AT&T, telling me that they'll have someone out tonight no later than 8 PM. I laugh at them and apologize for my skepticism. I am assured that someone will come out. I confirm that this is the number to call when no one shows up.

Ten minutes later, a tech calls to tell me he's on the way.

By 5 PM I’m home from work and have my phone working again. The tech who responded this time explains that it was a problem with the line feeding my house. It was laying on the ground, and–What?! Laying on the ground? The first tech told me he had personally buried it in April. No wonder then that rain and the growth of plants damaged the line. Tech #2 advised that he would get the line buried this time and that should solve my problems.

Alas, my DSL is acting screwy again, with poor connection speeds. Maybe burying my line will help.

And maybe monkeys will fly out of my butt…reading prompts from the customer service screen.

Editor's Note: This commentary first appeared in the November 2007 edition of MyVoiceNews.com.