Synapses blog Aghh , grammer

Dear HP, Your service sucks

A few years ago I decided to treat myself to a new laptop. Given that I usually work with HP gear (servers , desktops and laptops) I decided to get a HP laptop.

This is where I learnt that HP has two ranges , one for business customers and one for consumers.  Generally speaking its a lot harder to purchase the business range gear and generally speaking you also pay a higher premium for it.  HP don’t seen to encourage online shopping so for joe blogs you need to get into your local dse. working in IT I have had my fair share of dealing with the customer support team of the business machines, most cases get resolved within a few days.

Enter my DV100, now this was my pride and joy. My first new laptop, now this machine was pride and joy for a while but little did I know... it had laptop cancer.

this machine was great , pretty quick small. after about a year it started to get hot  and crash, no blue screen just bang and power off. So off to the shop it goes to get fixed, about a month later I get it back and everything seemed fine until about 9 months later pop. Again back to the shop to get fixed for another 6 weeks.

OK so two motherboards later you would hope it would be fine but 2 weeks after my extended warranty ended it again dies. I took the machine back to noel leeming and first of all they tried to flog me off since the warranty was finished. A quick email to HO saying how i had spent close to 5 grand there a few weeks ago and their mind changes. This is where i start to get pissed off from here it took about 6 weeks or it to get to HP's repair centre, another two weeks and they say yep its broken.. a few more weeks after that i get a phone call telling me that they will again repair it to show good faith.

Now being fair the machine at this stage is 3 years old, its also been repaired a few times but I could be certain that a repair is only going to stall the inevitable. I then proceeded to tell their rep that HP should realise there is a problem with the machine but they refuse. about two weeks later they say that there is another problem and they would replace it with the exact same model. Again not too happy with this idea either but it was better than nothing.

Another few weeks goes by so I email the ceo of HP. The very next day I get a call saying they will give me a brand new one and i will have it in a few days , a few days later i email them again to see where it is and they say its coming , another few days pass and still no laptop, So a Monday morning pissed off email to HP now they are telling me eta is December the 9th.

<!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} p {mso-margin-top-alt:auto; margin-right:0cm; mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; margin-left:0cm; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --> I am sorry HP but you have a lot to learn, for starters

• when a customer has a problem , its not a problem for you, its an opportunity to make a good impression and put things right.
• When a customer is left without service you have about 3 days to restore, repair or replace before the customer starts to get really annoyed.
• Where there is a trend in symptoms , change the treatment
• And finally when you set expectations, live up to them. Its better to under promise and over deliver.

unless you are really not intrested in the consumer market