Two things. 1. I just would like to remind users/customers that this was an upper management decision and NOT the policy of the customer service representatives. In fact, Ghacks source article, The Register, clearly points out, So please, don't take it out on the representative you eventually do get to talk to. This is not their policy nor is it their fault they are poorly trained, underpaid and forced to follow, without any deviation, rudimentary troubleshooting flow charts even if they know what the actual problem is and how to quickly fix it. 2. It appears after, after just 1 day in the public spotlight, HP ditches 15-minute wait time policy due to 'feedback'. Of course, HP's stated excuse was pure marketing hogwash. They claimed (my bold underline added), Freudian slip? I don't know but that is absolutely true! "Their" customer service experience - as in HP's experience and not the experience customers have with that service. In other words, they are looking for ways to cuts costs with no regard to customer satisfaction. CLEARLY, the goal was to **** off the caller so they will hang up and go with the less expensive digital service. Fine. I'll buy that. But they could have easily imposed a 1 minute delay at the beginning of the service call to inform callers of those other options. And then every few minutes during the legitimate wait for the next open rep, they could have interrupted their boring elevator music to inform the user they are #176 in the queue and tell them about the options again. But a mandatory 15 delay, even when reps were available? That's pure, purposeful mistreatment borne out of greed. Back to #1 above - The Registry points out that, instead of their article, the practice was abruptly terminated because, in addition to consumer uproar, So please and once again, try to refrain from take your legitimate frustration out on the poor customer service rep (even if you can't understand what they are saying due to their really thick accent).
Fair point about not picking on customer service reps. For most companies they are just doing what is their job to do. That said this is just one more reason why I will never buy anything from HP again. There are already better options and deliberately bad customer service is enough on its own.
It would be nice to say after-sell, poor customer service is unique to HP, but sadly, it is everywhere. I understand the fact there is no return on the huge investment for customer service. But for sure, bad public relations sure won't help future sells either. I already said that above. I guess you didn't read my whole reply.
Sorry, I did not see that part. People tend to glance over longer posts. Especially while I'm at work and have other things going on.
Yeah, the 2nd item I posted about, "HP ditches" the policy a whole 7 lines in on my post, no doubt was way too much to actually read and surely would have taken much much longer time than it took to find that information and adding another post repeating it.
I've owned (2) HP laptops. I'm on my 2nd one, but between this new scandal which was preceded by another where the company was sued for blocking customers from using non HP ink cartridges in their printers, they've lost me as customer.
Do note that ink scandal was many many years ago and long resolved - though they are still trying to persuade users to go genuine ink. And just like poor customer service is not unique to HP, neither is attempting to users to use genuine consumables either. The other printer makers have committed similar greedy scams... err... implemented similar consumer oriented policies too.
