General rant about HP Tech support (maybe someone can help)

[Nick Fields]

If this post needs to be moved to another forum, let me know and I'll modify as necessary. Let me start off as saying, I like HP Servers in general. iLO is a pretty good tool, and they run with good power, for good pricing, and most of the time without hiccups. However, HP's Server Tech support SUCKS! I'm always directed to call into the main number 800-474-6836, where when I say my product is a "Blade Center", "BL460c", "BL465c", or almost any other combination, it asks what model of "Laser Printer" i'm running! I've complained several times to the operators, and they dutifully log the case and thank me for my feedback (forgetting that the IVR has wasted 10 minutes of my life and 5 minutes of an HP employees). My latest issue is a question EBIPA addresses and GbE2c switches (I found the issue on these forums), but spent 30 minutes on hold in 4 queues while they tried to find the Blade support group. In the last queue, they said they'd take down my information and someone would call me back because the Blade switch group "doesn't take calls directly". That was 7 hours ago, so I guess I can be happy my question wasn't an emergency.

I feel better from the above rant, but if anyone has any good "back-door" numbers that would help in the future, I'd appreciate it.

[Ken Henault · Accepted solution]

Sorry you had a problem, but there is no back door. The responses you need to give to get to the right team are "Technical Support" then "server", then "ProLiant". That will be your quickest route to the right support queue.

Please come back, and post your question or issue here. Maybe you can get an answer quicker that way. That way, the answer will be available here for the next person with the same issue.

[Olivier Masse]

The best "back door" is using the ITRC to log a call yourself instead of doing it on the phone, which I rarely use. Put as much precise details as you can, so the support engineer will have everything needed to start working on your issue before you get called back. In some cases where it's clear that this is not an RTFM issue, you might get lucky and have your call shoved directly to a second-level support engineer. This is my experience with Integrity systems, with Proliants your mileage may vary, of course.

If you insist on using the phone, you can get a critical support contract for your most important systems. But this costs big money. Very big money. But it's worth it. I had such contracts at a previous job and believe me, I didn't waste time waiting in line or getting someone who's first task is to follow a script telling me to reboot and update my firmware. When I opened a call, the 1st level directly initiated a con call with the 2nd level and any problem was resolved quickly.

Good luck

[NonKing]

Greetings from the future.  What I would give to have the support HPE put out in 2009 now.  Now we have a chatbot that talks in circles and a support team that reads from a script.  Think you are getting somewhere with a higher teir of support?  NOPE! they are outsourced to professionals with thier hands tied away from offical answers.  All support gets you nowdays is "send us logs" "update to firmware XX" "did you try the thing you said you had already tired?"  HPE is just trying to automate responsiblity away.  No real thinking expert to help.  HPE too big to be of any help and too big to care.