Dave Packard Must Be Spinning In His Grave

HP...the company formerly known as Hewlett-Packard...one of the companies extolled in *Built To Last*...a company other companies look up to and admire...the founders, Dave Packard and William Hewlett, founders that other CEO's look up to and admire...these are the guys who invented Management By Walking Around among other things.  And remember when they made the best damn printers evar!? 

And they've got that allegedly award-winning tech support - it says so right on the box!

ARGGGGGGGHHHH!

I've gotten to the point where I feel physically ill as I contemplate picking up the phone for yet another round with their tech support.  (The last call, a few minutes ago - a busy signal.)  If this keeps up, simply hearing an Indian accent will trigger seizures.

So I bought an HP Pavilion a1540n for Cathy.  A Christmas present.  I'm setting it up for her Christmas Eve, after everyone's gone to bed, and it randomly reboots as I'm doing it.  Whatever, I figure, probably just a one-time thing.  When Cathy starts using her new PC on Christmas, it locks up.  It locks up more and more. 

So I'm pretty screwed here - I got my Christmas shopping done early, and therefore am already past the date I can return the machine to the retailer.  Note to self - procrastinate on the Christmas shopping.

I call the company formerly known as Hewlett-Packard's tech support.  They suggest it's a virus.  I just bought the computer!  I haven't installed anything yet!  How could it be a virus? 

Nevertheless, they suggest I do a destructive system recovery.  (An interesting thing about these PC's - the hard drive is partitioned, and one partition contains all the install software to reset your machine to factory defaults.  Seems kind of cool, at first, until you remember that hard drives aren't as reliable as good old CD roms.  Could my problem be corrupted install software?)

Didn't work.  Call them back.  Am put on hold.  Long story short, I go through this process four times as different tech support guys (all of whom try to sell me Norton Antivirus, assuring me that it will fix my problems.)  Finally, finally, they agree it must be hardware and will send me a box to ship my machine back to HP for repair.

"How long's that going to take?" I ask.  I guess Christmas is going to be late this year.

"Seven to ten days," they say.

Eleven business days later, I get the PC back and a sheet of paper claiming the motherboard's been replaced.

I plug it in.

"I'm scared," Cathy says.

"Me too," I say.

It doesn't even make it to the windows desktop.  It takes me three tries to get it to boot, and then it locks up when running Media Center.  It seems that the good folks at the company formerly known as Hewlett-Packard have somehow made my computer even worse!

So I call their tech support.  They suggest doing a destructive system recovery.  I go nuclear.  And, after ranting to their tech support people, they promise me the case manager will call me back within 24 hours.

He doesn't.

I call and rant some more.  Then they promise me he'll call Monday morning, at 10 AM sharp. 

It's 11:45 AM now.

What did I expect?  Dave Packard's dead.  His name's not on the box anymore.  The new chairman spies on their board of directors.

Building my wife's computer myself would have been less of a headache.

Anyhow, I beseech you, dear reader - if you're thinking of buying a product from HP, remember my story, and as a favor to me, buy from someone else.  (I'm even going to stop buying printers from them, out of spite.)  I've had good results from Alienware, so far.  Seems like the extra cost is worth it.  (Dell's okay - but they're why I had to buy my wife a PC in the first place.  The motherboard on our Dell burned out in less than two years.) 

The company formerly known as Hewlett-Packard must be destroyed.

Comments

[MikeyP]

Scary to see your story and Gordon Meyer's story appear within days of each other:

http://gordon.typepad.com/gordon/2007/01/hp_allinone_nig.html

[Darius K.]

Hah! Funny, that: I was just reading some of the HP stuff in "Built to Last" this morning. They really were a great company. The funny thing is that the point of "Built to Last" is that companies like HP can survive long after their visionary founders are gone. Not sure if that's quite holding up...

[Jesse Chounard]

Should you ever find yourself buying another prebuilt machine, I recommend ibuypower.com. The price was good, but the customer service was excellent.

I had a flaky stick of ram, and when I told customer service, they just had me ship it back, and sent me a new stick, no questions asked. They even sent me the new stick without waiting for the first to arrive. (On the understanding that they'd charge me for it if I didn't mail the first one back.)

I was quite happy with them.

[Anders Linder]

Wish i could say that i don't recognize the problem, but well... getting resonable support is a bitch.

[Jamie Fristrom]

Just found out that Dell bought Alienware, so no doubt Alienware's support will turn to crap soon also.

[Loredena]

I spent several months attempting to get an HP Pocket PC fixed/returned/replaced with much aggravation. They are so incompetent that they sent MY unit to someone else, and HIS unit to me. Three times.

It took emailing the CEO (handy link on website) AND calling the corporate office and asking for the CEO (which got me to the highest escalation level. Scarily incompetent for that, too). Still took weeks, but I finally received a new unit.

I recommend going straight to that now.

[Sergio]

This story reminds me why I've been such a big supporter of Apple/Mac products. Plug and play, baby! Plug and play. (ok, (pause) now pelt me with the "PC are better than Macs" tomatoes!)

[Colm Mac]

Yeah, I picked up a HP Laptop (compaq nx6325) and the thing works decently well most of the time. Except due to some conflict during windows startup, it can blue screen in the first five minutes. If it survives the first five minutes it stays up forever.

But I can tell you that it's unlikely I'll ever buy HP again. There tech support line actually closes at 5pm my local. Even though it is in Indian and they could quite easilly forward me to the Indian tech support on station for the US. Not that their tech support was a whole lot of use, but a company of HPs size with a global market should be able to maintain a 24hour telephone support.

But I don't think Hewlett or Packward would recognise HP as their company. HP of today is only the computer, printer and camera part of Hewlett-Packard. All the cool cutting edge stuff designed to make the world a better place, including the original instrument and measurement business, were spun off into Agilent Technologies.

[Hamumu]

I've never dealt with their tech support, but every time I foolishly bought something from HP, it's been crap. A laptop and more than one printer... After the laptop, the vow never to buy from them again was cemented.

[Nat]

man, i think i got the same computer or similar. my windows install was corrupt. i just went back to best buy and got it exchanged with a new one that works great.

[J D]

Sorry about your experience because I know my experience with the HP Tech Support and Repair Centre was great and fast. My repair took 3 days and they fixed my issue and my computer is working like a charm. If have problems connecting through the phone in the future I would suggest using their Online Chat Technician feature link its alot faster than waiting on the phone because I hate to wait on the phone when calling companies unless I have no choice.