Misguided HP customer support approach included forced 15-minute call wait times
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This is the most transparent metric juicing corporate speak I've
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seems like they're not the only ones to be honest.
Having said that, I absolutely hate ai or other digital assistants that try to help you.. I already did a bunch of research you stupid monkeys and the information they provide is useless, REALLY useless.. you're just making me hate your product more.
- edit -- this is also a part of the enshitification of the internet
Having said that, I absolutely hate ai or other digital assistants that try to help you.. I already did a bunch of research you stupid monkeys and the information they provide is useless, REALLY useless.. you're just making me hate your product more.
- edit -- this is also a part of the enshitification of the internet
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Ah, yes...nothing makes me happier and more relaxed than being told to "try using their website" when my problem is some sort of hardware failure or other major system failure that I know will require RMA...
This is up there with calling because your internet is out and getting the recording "use our website" yo if I could use the internet to reach your website I wouldn't need support!
This is up there with calling because your internet is out and getting the recording "use our website" yo if I could use the internet to reach your website I wouldn't need support!
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Companies aren't even pretending to care about their customers anymore. I'm getting to the point where I think that everything I learned in basic economics was a complete lie.
On a somewhat unrelated note, I recently had to book a last-minute plane ticket for business. The flight was exorbitantly expensive, as last-minute tickets are, but the plane was half empty. Shouldn't the price be going down if seats are available if economics work the way they were supposed to? Any ticket price higher than the marginal cost to the airline of flying one additional passenger should make them more money.
On a somewhat unrelated note, I recently had to book a last-minute plane ticket for business. The flight was exorbitantly expensive, as last-minute tickets are, but the plane was half empty. Shouldn't the price be going down if seats are available if economics work the way they were supposed to? Any ticket price higher than the marginal cost to the airline of flying one additional passenger should make them more money.
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I suppose they were hoping users needing help would hang up, so there would be less need for phone reps.
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MBA's ruin everything. I can pretty much guarantee that some MBA analyzed costs and decided to make more money by ruining the customer service experience because they only cared about the money, not the customers.
Fuck HP for lots of reasons. This is just one more. The fact that they fixed this does not matter. The fact that they were willing to do thus until they were caught tells me exactly what kind of company they are.
Fuck HP for lots of reasons. This is just one more. The fact that they fixed this does not matter. The fact that they were willing to do thus until they were caught tells me exactly what kind of company they are.
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If I could find the answer on the webpage I wouldn't have called in the first place.
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I don't know why they didn't just do the thing every other company is doing, and just fire enough call staff to naturally have at least 15 minute wait times.
Also "due to unexpected call volume" is the biggest lie ever. If that line comes up every time you call in, that's not unexpected at all.
Also "due to unexpected call volume" is the biggest lie ever. If that line comes up every time you call in, that's not unexpected at all.
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RickRoyLeonPrisZhoraRacha
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Generational discriminatory support services, how can we not help you? Have you tried mashing the 0 button on your cordless phone? No? Well that will take you back to main menu, so you can be forced to listen to your options, again and again. Keep mashing zero button? Well after the nth mashing, you'll be put into our helpful, Thank you for calling, Goodbye! queue, and promptly disconnected!
Can't get on the internet to access our generous and confusing support for whatever model you have? Have you tried Hp.com from your mobile device? (cellular data rates will apply).
If you cannot web search the issue, try a HP forum, or reddit sub, and can't RTFM that you forgot to download latest drivers INSTEAD of installing antiquated CDROM drivers that came in the box (oh why)...and cant' use the HP Support Chat bots or human you might luck out on...then call that 800 number to your hearts content! And on a mobile phone? Better be on a charger or full battery because you ... will...wait...in...queue!
Can't get on the internet to access our generous and confusing support for whatever model you have? Have you tried Hp.com from your mobile device? (cellular data rates will apply).
If you cannot web search the issue, try a HP forum, or reddit sub, and can't RTFM that you forgot to download latest drivers INSTEAD of installing antiquated CDROM drivers that came in the box (oh why)...and cant' use the HP Support Chat bots or human you might luck out on...then call that 800 number to your hearts content! And on a mobile phone? Better be on a charger or full battery because you ... will...wait...in...queue!
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15 minutes is enough to buy another computer from another supplier...
(and I hope this was on toll-free lines)
(and I hope this was on toll-free lines)
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You're a good user, but there's plenty of people who use calling support as their first and only solution path. Having done some customer support, it can be astounding how helpless some customers seem to be. You wonder if they call someone for help tying their shoes every morning.
That said, that's just a cost of doing business with the public. You're going to have to deal with some morons. And you're not going to discourage the ones who don't want to do any web support before calling in by making them wait. All you're going to do is piss them off and make them harder to deal with when a support tech finally gets the call.
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Anyone who's gotten the "higher than expected call volume" message in off hours and then been connected to someone suspiciously quickly knows in their bones that this is not new. I noticed this becoming more common during COVID.
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I feel that this may be to do with how we (as tech enthusiasts...) work. We've usually tried the low hanging fruit of reboots/update, but Joe public probably hasn't.
I'd be a rich man if I had a £ for every time I was called without anyone doing the bare bones of troubleshooting. i.e restart.
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Did it also do the thing where you have to enter long numbers (customer ID, support number, product ID, etc...) into the system via a slow, buggy, and tedious interface to get into the queue, and then the very first thing the customer service agent always requires is for you to give you all of that information again so they can manually enter it into the ticket? That's a favorite of mine because you see it everywhere.
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Just when I thought late stage capitalism couldn't get any worse. I thought long wait times due to understaffing was bad enough, but this is like a whole new level of underhanded asshattery. This is like they had whole meetings where the agenda was brainstorming ways to make their customers lives worse. Not like I was ever going to buy anything from HP anyway, but this certainly solidifies my thinking there.
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Any chance for a class action around deceptive practices? After all, if contacting support for an item under warranty is part of a consumer's rights and contract, and HP is intentionally lying in an explicit attempt to DENY that customer those rights? I would think there has to be some fat, juicy lawsuit waiting for the right lawyer to file....
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I feel like telling outright lies to your customers should be punishable in some way?
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After cutting down the product and/or service below what they expect people will accept, having outrageous pricing, and generally being as customer hostile as they can imagine, for these sorts of companies, ANY call volume is unexpected.
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Everybody pulls this crap.
"Longer than expected wait times".... That shit's automatic for pretty much everybody nowadays.
"Longer than expected wait times".... That shit's automatic for pretty much everybody nowadays.
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I believe there's still standby, technically, but most people don't want to risk not getting the flight they wanted, and waiting a few more hours for a seat, if not the next day...
Also, it's not like if the airline drops the price at the last minute, the flight will fill up with people just waiting for a last-minute discount flight to anywhere. It's not like getting same-day discount tickets to a Broadway show. Also, most people book round-trip flights, so while that particular flight was empty. it could be the returning flight for most people booking wasn't as empty, so people were still willing to pay.
https://simpleflying.com/standby-airline-tickets/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standby_(air_travel)
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Oh wow, I completely forgot! I can't wait to go check out HP's digital support consisting of:
- An FAQ with softball questions and obvious answers
- A communities thread where customers are asking the same questions and getting no answer
- A KB article that seems to match but provides resolution steps in an outdated UI version that was removed in the new UI
- A barely comprehensible AI chatbot that's just reading the same things I am
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How exactly was this supposed to help customers?
"Customers are getting angry about spending 15 minutes talking to someone to fix their problem."
"Okay. Make them wait 15 minutes so they have time to calm down and think clearly."
I don't think customer service has been an actual thing in the last few decades when it comes to tech companies. Many times, questions are answered by other users who ran into the same problem with minimal to no input from support reps other than the canned "restart your computer", or the more contemporary "please send me a personal message to hide our non-answer from non-member visitors, we need to drive those engagement numbers up."
The only time I recall getting actual help from a support number in the last decade was calling Microsoft about a defunct product key. The rep was required to be extremely vague with his answer. IIRC, he said something along the lines of "You've read your product key, but something's off. Due to company policy, I cannot tell you what is off. I just need you to know that you're mistaking one letter for another."
"Customers are getting angry about spending 15 minutes talking to someone to fix their problem."
"Okay. Make them wait 15 minutes so they have time to calm down and think clearly."
I don't think customer service has been an actual thing in the last few decades when it comes to tech companies. Many times, questions are answered by other users who ran into the same problem with minimal to no input from support reps other than the canned "restart your computer", or the more contemporary "please send me a personal message to hide our non-answer from non-member visitors, we need to drive those engagement numbers up."
The only time I recall getting actual help from a support number in the last decade was calling Microsoft about a defunct product key. The rep was required to be extremely vague with his answer. IIRC, he said something along the lines of "You've read your product key, but something's off. Due to company policy, I cannot tell you what is off. I just need you to know that you're mistaking one letter for another."
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I’m a millennial. I hate talking on the phone. If my problem could have been resolved on a company’s labyrinthine support site, I would not be calling anyone.
What an astoundingly stupid idea.
What an astoundingly stupid idea.
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Basic economics tells us that if people put up with being treated like shit to get a lower price, they’ll get treated like shit.
As far as the airlines, they fly with the planes more full than ever. There are any number of reasons why one flight might not be full.
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Calling Comcast support results in a recorded message telling the customer to unplug their gateway, plugging it back in, and they'll call you back with a robodialer to ask you to press 1 if that fixed your problem in about 15 minutes. It doesn't matter if you've already done it, it's required condition for the honor of speaking to their highly skilled technical support professionals. If it didn't fix the problem, only THEN will they add you to the 15-minute-hold-time call queue.
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It's a combination of enshitification and pushing the trust thermocline, seeing how far they can get to the edge before they lose all their customers.
Enshitification:
https://www.theguardian.com/science...cquarie-dictionary-word-of-the-year-explained
The Trust Thermocline:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1588115310124539904.html
And the follow-up thread on The Trust Thermocline:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1588148634662707200.html
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What seems weird about this is that, at least in my experience, talking to support is the absolute last resort, there's no way you'd hassle with phone support if you can fix the problem yourself.
Is HP just deluded about the quality of their self-help options; or are there people out there who reach for the phone as a first step?
Is HP just deluded about the quality of their self-help options; or are there people out there who reach for the phone as a first step?
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Which is probably why some companies have added automated text services. They're great and easy to use. First, choose your problem from this curated list of textbook problems you can find anywhere else. If it's not on that list, press 2 so they can robodial you and add you to the call queue.
Simple! =)
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"You people are just getting to be too much to bother with. Please stop purchasing our products."
- HP Support
- HP Support
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Tell us you hate your customers and want to lay off more employees without telling us you hate your customers and want to lay off more employees.
Also I haven't looked at it but I'm willing to bet that the documentation they want customers to use sucks.
Also I haven't looked at it but I'm willing to bet that the documentation they want customers to use sucks.
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God, I hate it when I'm on hold with a company and the godawful hold music gets interrupted every 30 seconds with a prerecorded message saying, "Did you know that we have a website? Did you know that you can do things on our website, you fool? Didn't you realize that you can do literally anything on our website, you absolute nincompoop? What are you doing making us pay customer support people peanuts to answer your phone call when you should be using our website, idiot???"
And meanwhile the only reason I called at all is because I already tried using their website and it informed me that the only possible way to resolve my issue is to make a goddamn phone call. Infuriating.
And meanwhile the only reason I called at all is because I already tried using their website and it informed me that the only possible way to resolve my issue is to make a goddamn phone call. Infuriating.
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