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Is it me or is HP support really bad now?

 
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James M. Dunn
Frequent Advisor

Is it me or is HP support really bad now?

All,

I've been working with HP servers going on 11 years now and have called for hardware and software support a few times over the past year and have noticed the service slide into a deep dark abyss, other than this forum does anyone know where or what link I can use to complain to HP!?

Thanks in advance and with points.

Jim Dunn
75 REPLIES 75
IT_2007
Honored Contributor
Solution

Re: Is it me or is HP support really bad now?

If you really feel pain, you can escalate to Regional Manager. We had few issue in the past and resolved this way.
Luk Vandenbussche
Honored Contributor

Re: Is it me or is HP support really bad now?

I think the best way is to contact your HP sales representative, to which you can tell your story.
Peter Godron
Honored Contributor

Re: Is it me or is HP support really bad now?

Jim,
as you have a support contract, I would raise this within your company and your buyer, therby adding the buying power of your company. If this does not work, contact your HP Support Co-ordinator with examples.
Always ask to be kept in the loop and foloow up. Personally I have not had any problems with HP support, perhaps depends on how you get to talk to.
Good Luck.
Jaime Bolanos Rojas.
Honored Contributor

Re: Is it me or is HP support really bad now?

James,

Most of the people at HP are really nice, even though no system is perfect, if you got a particular issue with hardware product, then get case scalated from the bottom up, from your tech support, just give them a call, explain them the situation, tell them you want to talk to a manager and go from there, if in any way you are not happy with the service, HP will do everything possible to keep you happy!

Regards,

Jaime.
Work hard when the need comes out.
Mel Burslan
Honored Contributor

Re: Is it me or is HP support really bad now?

James,

I do not know about the size of data center or server farm that you are in charge of, but we have considerable number of unix and wintel servers in our data center, hence we have a quasi-dedicated Account Support Engineer (ASE) for our corporate account.

I have been on the same boat with you as far as the service quality dwindling down. And I brought up this issue in one of our monthly on-site service meetings, where we get face time with HP and the reseller channels.

I, for one, voiced my dissatisfaction with the service I am getting under the new support agreement we went to (or rather forced by hp to go to). Anytime I call for support on a system which is not covered by their very expensive Critical Support (CS)level, I have to call the 633 3600 number and wait an ungodly amount of time to talk to someone, who seems to be getting paid a minimum wage and have no clue what I am talking about, when I call in with a hpux problem. Getting over this hurdle and speaking to someone who can comprehend the problem, takes me anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes depending on the alignment of sun, moon and the stars :)

When I mentioned this to our ASE and indicated that, we may not have all the servers under CS but overall, my company pays in the order of millions of dollars in support agreement fees and we should be treated a little different than the mom-n-pop shop, who has 2 winter servers and calling for support.

His advice to me is to log the bad experiences encountered and send it to him in an email so that he can present it to the people in charge of the support. Otherwise, verbal customer dissatisfaction is not something support is really keen about.

Now, I have a little log book for everytime I have to call this dreadful 6330 3600 number. Fortunately, thanks to forums, I do not have to call them as often as I used to.

Cheers from the left coast.

________________________________
UNIX because I majored in cryptology...
James M. Dunn
Frequent Advisor

Re: Is it me or is HP support really bad now?

II think its this, they (HP) are spread to thin, and they cannot communicate with each group effectively. One hand does not know what the other is doing.

For example: you have a contract number that indicates that you have 24x7 4 hour support and you get a person on the line that tells you that the their computer shows next day, you tell them the server is on 4 hour and yes your thinking the customer is always correct (we will change it for you Mr. customer), but you still find your hard drive has taken the long way to you server, 42 hours to be correct, even if the servers hardware was next day then 24 hours should be the max but 42 hours. By the way this happened to a memory module ticket.

Cheers to all points to all.

thanks,

Jim D
Mel Burslan
Honored Contributor

Re: Is it me or is HP support really bad now?

Jim,

Unfortunately, HP's 24x7 4 hours response time service agreement doesn't worth the trouble I came to figure out. The only thing they are obligated to do is to give you a call in 4 hours from the reporting of the incident and let you know about the progress of your case. Their 4 hours response does not even bind them to send a tech to diagnose the problem in 4 hours. It is on best effort after the first response within 4 hours.

We had a production server (of lesser importance) down for days due to this or that reason, replacing cpu boards, back panel, memory modules one at a time, because they did their best effort scenario instead of replacing the whole bad server and trying to fix the problem in-house, afterwards. This was a couple of years ago, when the service was supposed to be better than what it is today. I am afraid if we fall into the same situation today, what it would take to get that server fixed. God's bolt maybe ? :)
________________________________
UNIX because I majored in cryptology...
DCE
Honored Contributor

Re: Is it me or is HP support really bad now?



Jim,

I have had much the same experience over the years. It seems that we are paying more for less. We used to have a senior engineer assigned to our account for troubleshooting - now it is "whoever is free"

The 7 x 24 hour response time is a call back time - not an on-site time. It takes up to 24 hours just to get an engineer on site anymore.

the other degradation in service is in new equipment installs - It used to be that when you paid for installation, the equipment could be installed at the customers convenience - now there is an additional charge if a) you want it installed in non-business hours or b)you want it installed quicker than three day minimum of calling the install request in (which they will not accept until the equipment is on site!)

I have gotten to the point were I cc the sales rep with all communications to HP - That has proven to be the most efficient way to get HP to respond with the stated limits (for me at least)

Re: Is it me or is HP support really bad now?

Well I guess I'm setting myself up to be shot down, but the reality is we get the support we deserve...

10 years ago, when we bought a 'critical' system we were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars/pounds/shekels/'insert your currency here' on the tin, and we didn't think much of spending up to 20% of the value of the tin on support contracts. 20% of a $1M tin purchase paid the salary of at least one head to support that system!

Now we are in the land of 'commodity IT' - this is where IT analysts, industry experts and yes, the vendors too have been pushing us - now that critical system might only cost us $0.1M, and guess what - 20% of *that* figure don't pay much of anyones salary, whether they're in Palo Alto, Houston, New York, London, or even Bangalore...

Result? Poorer levels of support except for those who can afford critical support contracts. I work with many vendors, particularly the 'big three' of HP, Sun and IBM, and I see quality slipping in all three. If we want commodity IT, we should expect commodity IT support.

Hopefully some day soon, people will remember that IT is an engineering discipline where quality is key rather than price. Maybe then things might change for the better again.

Yours pessimistically (sic?)

Duncan

I am an HPE Employee
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