News Own an HP Support Pack? Read On..

Dear reader, allow me to tell you a personal tale of woe.

Take a small company, if you will. A small company troubled by bad craftmanship and bad support from their laptop manufacturer. The new IT Manager in his (rather good) wisdom chooses to buy Toshiba laptops as the new corporate standard.

At the time of the first purchase, the 3-Year On Site toshiba warranty isn't available and so is directed to a strange sounding product. Let's call it the:

HP Support Pack for Multi Vendor Services (MVS). This support pack has an HP Part number, contact details.. in fact it looks very much like a proper HP Product. But, amazingly they're just generous enough to run a Managed Warranty Service on any equipment you like.. leave it to HP, they're your guys!

Sure enough, when the inevitable failures come, the number is called and people come out and fix the laptop. The world is at peace once more and the IT staff can happily return to the red-hot 120% utilisation pace they are used to.

Then spin on a few months. HP goes through a merger with another company, let's call them Compaq. A few more months pass and suddenly one of the exceptional, reliable and (at this rate) superior to HP laptops, goes wrong. "No problem", they cry, "We'll call the number again". Then we enter the Twilight Zone.

The lady on the end of the phone is a little confused, after all suddenly they had no options to press to get through to the right person and just held on. One transfer later, they're somewhere else.. then somewhere else, then somewhere else. Then someone calls them back and takes some details.. then they call back a little uncertain as to what's going on.

About now they've explained about the problem, the product and what used to happen about eight times. Finally someone seems to help. When their boss asks "Ok, who should we call", they're told that they called the right number and the receptionist put you through incorrectly. "So why is this happening?" They cry, "Well, we're changing systems you see and everything is on a case by case basis.. it won't happen again."

Somewhat contented the IT team sit back and wait. The following day (this support pack is supposed to be next day response) nothing really happens and incredibly something else breaks.. they couldn't possibly do it again, surely? But sure enough, our intrepid IT team travel through another 4 departments before getting to someone too fed up with the polava not to take their details.

At this stage, there's no resolution.. however at least we have HP's complaint department to bail us out. SOMEONE must know about this product. So patient reader, I shall leave you with the 'response' and you can draw your own conclusions as to whether you want to leave your support in the hands of HP:

The e-mail has reached the HP Pavilion Notebook Technical support for
North America. Please contact Toshiba Support for resolving the issue.


Thank you for taking the time to contact us.

 

There's a sickening likelihood that you could have been on the phone to my place of employment.

If so... drop me an email and I'll explain in a bit more detail what's been going on this week.

Quite a furore. Seriously, I go on holiday for one week and the place goes to hell.



*n

 

Penski, no way you could post a little bit of info so HP doesn't look like the absolute complete crap most of us think it is...? I'm sure I'm not alone when I read this and say, "Wait till my friends hear about this!"...

 

It is a bit touchy me writing this but...

I work for the company which has the helpdesk technical support contract for HP in Europe.

Personally, I deal with the digital imaging products.

In the same building we have the tech support for HP Pavilion, Compaq Presario and laptops amongst many others (including the xBOX Live service one - starts in september).

For the last few days, our phone system has been going haywire (I had to stay until 7pm tonight doing callbacks - I normally finish at 5 after an 8am start.) coupled with increased traffic due to new ranges being launched...Not a quiet time.

We're also rapidly expanding to meet demand and provide a more streamlined service (250-550+ employees within 12 months!) This could explain the apparent nervousness of a 'newbie' agent.

If you feel that an agent hasn't acted to an appropriate level, call again and ask to be put through to an exceptions agent.

I don't know if we even handle the high-number accounts. There is a high possibility that Hardware follow up do it. (This is the case if the number was 0207 XXX XXXX).

In any case, try not to lay into the company too much. Every call that we, as technical support, take is logged with name, phone number, address and a case detailing the problem, troubleshooting steps taken and solution found is created. HP Europe read every single one of these cases and, based on them, quite large changes are made.

Sorry for being vague...Can't really go into too much detail.

*n

 

Penski, YGM

The problem has really stemmed from the fact that we're wasting valuable support time here because HP have simply 'lost' our product.. every agent we speak to has no idea as to the existence of the support pack, even though it has a 'name' and part number.

The reason we pick 'next day on site response' is that our staff need things turned around quickly. So far we've waited four days for a power supply, so I dread to think what's going to happen if we have a laptop failure.

 

Penski u live in newcastle yer? You work at the same place as me I think, except I'm upstairs on the oneandone project.

I bet thats u getting on the 100 bus every morning

 

I phoned HP support yesterday with a scanner problem.....

Can't say I was impressed (though I rearely am with helpdesk staff)

I explained my problem, explained what I'd tryed to do to solve it. they sent me an email with a link to a document describing the things I'd just tried to do and explained to the support guy I'd already done. I noted down the call number (which I had to ask for!!!) then phoned back 5 minutes later gave my call reference and they had no record of my call, So I explained my problem again, and the steps I'd taken to try and fix and he said there wasn't really anything else he could suggest.

Oh and the first guy I spoke to after asking which service pack I was using had to check with a college what the latest one for windows 2000 was!!!

 

*Raises an eyebrow through the roof*

*Works in Digital Imaging 2*

*Gets the 100 every morning*

Say hello next time (not if I have big silver headphones on though - I need my music time )

*n