did it occur to anyone at HP...

[Otis Stockstill]

actually dennis, i'm highly concerned with all of it as i'm sure tom is. i for one don't mind change as long as it's logical and an improvement, thus far i see neither. after the fiasco i had to deal with this morning on a production down support call added to the ridiculous lack of forethought with moving the forums and knowledge base, i'm not a happy camper.

[klb]

My client also spends a very large amount of annual Hardware Support dollars at HP.  I've discussed with my client the ongoing difficulties I've been experiencing using HP support as well as the most recent ITRC hack job.  We are looking at moving a lot of stuff away from HP to a 3rd party hardware support organization.  This will save my client probably about 30 to 40 percent and it will lose HP about 85% of my clients hardware support dollars.

At least the 3rd party support outfits mostly keep their support personell in the U.S. and/or make sure they can speak English properly and are treating the customer as if the customer actually is the priority.  Not at all anywhere near what can be said about Hewlitt Packard!

We can rise up and speak with our contract renewal or lack thereof in order to let HP know that continuing to ignore the customer is the wrong thing to do.

How many times have you got into a support situation where the person on the other side of the planet refuses to move on to the next level or get somebody else who knows how to interpret what you are saying on the phone and/or is able to actually understand what you are saying on the phone and/or is capable of helping you?

It's happened too many times for me with HP support ( hardware and software calls ).

-klb

[TomSmith]

My pet peeve with HP support lately has been them closing a case as soon as a part has shipped, in the case of customer replaceable parts. If there is a call back on the case, I have to go through the hassle of opening a new case, this is a joke!

The case should remain open until the customer confirms the problem has been fixed.

[klb]

Yes well that's more Management short sightedness for you.  They drive their "engineers" to close as many tickets as quickly as possible.  Nevermind that this can and does cause the customer issues (i.e. frustration ).  What they end up seeing is an increase in tickets and therefore an increase in how many issues were resolved because they keep closing them.

One way to combat this is to say NO when asked if a part only will do the trick.  Tell them you want a field engineer to come out there and do the work.

In my case, I've gotten up to like 7 distinct tickets on a single issue.  It's frustrating the crap out of me but as far as the management and the workers are concerned, this is the way thing should work.  It's progress and proves their worth to their own upper managers in the form of a report showing all the tickets they resolved.