Is it me or is HP support really bad now?

[Frank Copeland]

The backslide in call center support has becomre more evident to me for the entire calendar year of 2007. I have reported this issue with my local CE team out of Ft Collins who have to apologize to me and then report my complaint to their management. They are (the Ft Collins team) a GREAT group of people by they way.

I'm a HPUX system customer. I agree with the notes above regarding the call center support falling way off. Scale of 1 to 10 compared to 12 months ago? I rate it a 1, being very poor.

That evaluation based off of the following:
1. Bad response time "JUST ANSWERING THE PHONE". Weekends are impossible, I've waited for over an hour on Saturday MORNINGs then gave up.
2. Poor english communication skills (ie: record not REEECord)
3. Insistence on me providing the same information that was supplied on previous call, or even repeating my service agreement ID after I've punched it into my telephone.
4. Tangled in bureaucracy about device serial numbers because my primary ID# doesn't provide them with the information for service on a device currently causing/having problems (I used to get passed this pretty easily, now days I have to have every little number available to me).
5. Call in support for Software and hardware are equally bad (Level 1 english for data protector is impossible to understand every time).
6. Add logistic (delivery) support and their call up response to hardware and software complaints. The companies that you outsourced for logistics can't help with any questions because they can't be understood. Also very rude. Last weekend 12/3 Sunday was a terrible experience for me. I was trying to find out about a delivery that was supposed to come to me on Saturday and the best they did was confirm that my Friday delivery made it (that was the wrong part which created the need for a Saturday delivery which never happened).

There, I feel a little better now. I know its nothing compared to the grand scheme of what should be my real life. It's just that I hate to see a company like HP free falling like this all in the name of corporate greed. And I cringe knowing that the enterprise I work for has so much riding on this lousy service.

Put the service back in your tech support please.

[Joshua Small_2]

I've had several cases open for forever.

http://forums12.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1128223

PSP 7.8 killed our servers. In several months of working with HP, the best they would ever tell us is to upgrade drivers. Ultimately the case went cold and they forgot about us. When PSP 7.9 came out we finally had some relief.

http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1176222&admit=109447626+1196925338986+28353475

Firmware update also affected a server. HP's latest official advise? Firmware updates are not to be done by end users. Honestly if I had someone working for me who told a client they do not have a manager and cannot escalate a case, that person wouldn't be working for me any longer.

http://forums12.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1158447

Tape drive hasn't worked since day one. We've been waiting three months on parts.


Care Packs with "four hour response" have never been answered in less than 24 hours. Noone seems to speak English, and it's definitely nobody's fault.

[Kapil Jha]

See I think HP support is not concentrated..they have various teams for various functions plus they are very process oriented but this does not help everytime.
In critical problem they have to get approval from other team even if they know the solution(no body want to take load).
Well if you seriously have problem ask you sales representation or your project manager he would be having all details of HP escalation matrix.
Either you or you project manager would escalate the case and i wish you'll get a nice support.
Hope this help,
Kapil

[Joshua Small_2]

Hi Kapil,

You're way off the mark.. I wish I could post a recording of how many hours of conversations we've had to this effect already.

Hell I called HP sales and advised that I'd be looking to consolidate with an EVA SAN- BUT only if they can offer something in the way of better support than we were getting.

Their response was to apologise and tell me that all support is outsourced to Bangladesh.. so it's not HP's fault when it's bad.

[James M. Dunn]

Update

I have been working on HPUX servers for 10 years or so and i consider myself a hard core HPUX person but frankly it's time to look elsewhere; so this year I started looking at AIX class servers just because HP has support is so bad.

I have not called support in a year or so, but have called them for hardware replacment, the last time took 30 plus hours to get the part replaced!

Sad... ehh :(

[Joel Belizario]

It is very sad... how much business do all these vendors have to lose before they realize the system isn't working?

It seems if you're not lucky enough to have a service enabled reseller or have the expertise in house you're pretty much screwed.

[Joshua Small_2]

Hi Joel,

That does bring us to a good point.

Are the options for "inside expertise" a good mitigator to this? I note HP have a number of training courses. Perhaps some of us better IT professionals can reduce the reliance on support?

[Capel]

woa extensive topic about HP support situation ...

[Joel Belizario]

Hi Joshua,

I guess it depends on your infrastructure and how well it is run. I think if you are running anything that is high availability / mission critical there should be some sort of internal process, expertise, etc. to ensure minimal downtime.

Especially important to note is that most service contracts are reliant upon part availability so even if you have a 2-hour response time you still be out of luck if they don't have the part locally available!

Case in point, one customer I dealt with had their VP's laptop HDD fail but they did not keep any spares on hand because they relied totally on their service contract to provide a same-day fix. Only problem was the part would arrive the next day because there was none in stock locally. (And I've heard cases where parts are not available nationally, oh boy...)

Of course cost is an issue once you start getting into infrastructure level equipment like servers and SANs but surely the cost of spare equipment does not equate to the cost of business downtime?

But back to your original question if you have a sizeable investment in vendor infrastructure I think it does make sense to spend money on training and having expertise in house - vendors normally outsource support anyway and it's pretty hit and miss whether the 3rd party is as good as you expect them to be considering the amount of money you spend on service contracts...


Joel

[Eric Antunes]

Hi James,

It is really bad because costs are before quality of service in the priority chain. But it is not only with HP. I think it is global and a consequence of the low cost outsourcing model.

Best Regards,

Eric

[Alzhy]

How BAD?

Very bad specially if you are not on Titanium (or whatever else is the holiest of support contracts) SUpport Plan.

Lately we've been encountering just a sheer pandemonium and confusion on HP's support:

- lost logs and data sent
- sometimes FE would show on site not knowing what to do
- wrong parts sent
- analysis systems used by back end sometimes are not accurate (i.e. our PA8900 CPU sniffed by their systems as a PA8600!)

And here's what really sometiems keep my blood boiling:

You call the 800 number to Follow up on a case. You hit Option 3. Punch in that "Case Number" and you're supposedly routed to the approriate team. And lo and behold - HP Human on the other end greets you with a "How can I Help You Sir"! I sometimes would jokingly tell them with - "Yes I want lots of Pepperoni and Cheese and I want the crust to be not too well done"! ;^)

What is the use of punching in the case number if it's not EFFICIENTLY USED!? I would have expected the support person on the other end to greet me with --- "May I know your Name Sir? I see that Case Number 12345667789 is currently - blah blah blah and I have the case history on my screen.."

But NAH.. the HP person will continue to ask you a litany of questions as if HP has no record of the case...

Another thing, ISEE. SOme of our P24 and Titanium Support Systems have ISEE monitoring in place. When you call in - the Back Line Engineer does not seem to have access to ISEE data - which again results in INEFFICIENCIES! The adnmin is again asked to send in the details of the issue whic ISEE should already have forwarded to HP!

I do not care where my call is handled or if it is a Kumar, Juan, Nguyen, James, Chang or McElroy who attends to my case. As long as it is efficeintly handled and INFORMATION flows through efficeintly amongst HP's backend and front end teams!

[James M. Dunn]

Nelson,

That is a lucid, intelligent, well thought-out answer.

10 points!

hhahhaha.

JD

[erics_1]

I've sat back and nodded my head with much that's been said in this thread. First, let me preface this by saying there are many outstanding backline engineers still with HP...if you can get to them before pulling your hair out in frustration.

SW calls have been logged with not even an initial response for days. Other calls are worked by engineers who have no direction on where they're going to fix the problem. It's a big fishing expedition until you request they escalate the call.

I just spent 45 minutes trying to reopen a HW call (warranty) that was not resolved yesterday but closed anyway. We have to open a new call. So I explain what's wrong. I even tell them I need someone onsite to run ssconfig to fix a machine ID. I'm told I don't have SW support on the system (ugh!). The admin in the next cube from me is laughing as he can hear everything. We're both ex-rce's. What we get now is a far cry from what customers got several years ago.

My guess is that today's inexperienced front line people will start moving to backline in the next few years, supplanting the veteran back line folks which we rely on now to get problems fixed. A new crop of inexperienced front line people will take their place and all support will have moved out of the US and Canada for good.

For us, unless it's under HW warranty, we have dropped all HP HW support and went with a 3rd party for less than half the price. We get spare parts on site and have access to phone-in support 24X7.

We dropped all SW support except for those systems which are DP cell servers. Most of our calls are for DP. We'll open T&M calls for other systems as needed. This way, we'll only pay for what we use and we'll start out with a backline resource when logging T&M calls. We essentially went from having phone-in support on 10 systems to all of our systems (~100).

I've brought concerns to our contract admin, the regional customer service rep and emailed Mark Hurd several times last year. We've received sincere apologies but none discussing what will be changed to fix the existing problems. I don't blame them. Their hands are tied. But we'll no longer pay for this mess.

Fix the problems and we'll start bringing support costs back to HP. I customers are paying a lot of money to fund HP's training exercises. We'll no longer contribute.

My $.02
Eric

[Víctor Cespón]

It's the company as a whole that it's to blame. They have different teams of outsourced people with very little training a no communication between them, and their IT systems are an example of how not to do things.
- If sometimes you provide a case number and the support rep cannot get your company or case details, it's because they are not there. HP "archives" (=deletes) cases after 3 months.
- If you send and e-mail and get no answer or callback is because that e-mail got lost. The stupid e-mail system they use to send things to the cases fails 30% of the time.
- If support rep cannot find your contract or carepack details it's because the search by serial number fails like 20% of the time.
- If support rep takes too much time to lookup something it's because they are connected though maybe a 256 kbps line for a whole building and after clicking a page takes 30 seconds to load.
- If a part or CE is not dispatched on time is many times because the incredibly-slow hyper-complicated fill-case-details-three-times dispatch system is down again and for half the day nothing can be dispatched.
- If a part gets delayed or appears on the wrong place could be because they have 5 differet ways of dispatching, and they are changing the procedures every month.
- If you can't find a driver it's because HP "Drivers and software" page is a complete disaster since last October and nobody seems to care about it. They rush new models though the door without drivers, firmware or proper manuals available.
- Support has been outsourced in many countries, and has been such a failure that they have cancelled plans to do the same on other countries.
- People on L1 support are not HP engineers, are not trained by HP and some of them are still finishing university studies. It's a miracle that something get's done right.

[Maros Podstupka]

If you think that HP doesn't provide propper support to your company, it's partially your fault as well. If you're the one responsible, you should enforce the quality of the service you pay for by escallating the particular issue, you're not satisfied with.(If you're not, then you should notify someone who is) I'm sure after clarifying what exactly do you expect you would manage hp to give you support your business needs.

[Andres_13]

I think the outsourcing is the keystone here, because people that doesn't work directly to hp really does not offer 100%. Thus and The fact that leaflet with a huge bureaucracy inside HP (yes i really do not believe that the client must share the blame because first HP has not apropiated feedback channels) have made the service considerably decresed.

[Brian M Welch]

I'll just say that out here (Central Valley, CA), Our ASE and area CE's are phenomenal. Quick response times, and robust communication. I'll admit, phone support is a different world, but working with the HP reps in our area has been nothing short of outstanding.

Sorry to hear of your issues..

[Josh Buechel]

I'm a former Mercury user. Mercury support was great until HP started getting their hands into it. Now they created their first full HP version of the performance software and it's riddled with bugs. Their level 1 support is just shy of an automated spam bot sending solutions via email. We now have script readers in India that are less capable than a four year old to try to carry on an intelligent conversation for our support. Good job HP! How about you pay real American's real money, support your own country and quit using labor that is just shy of the slavery that is built into the products found on Walmart shelves.

[James M. Dunn]

Josh,

Script readers!

Perfect!

[TwoProc]

I think that HP support is great. However, I have had these guys close a call on me b/c something wasn't right in a part number, serial number, etc.

Other than that, I think they're doing a good job. If you think that they are a problem - try Metalink! Now that's non-service!

[Jov]

If you get pass 1st level and get to communicate with some of the senior tech supports, they're generally pretty good. But there's not enough them.

Best is to know the products and pin-point where the problem is, ie help them help you.


Jov

[YAQUB_1]

Hi James,

I think so U has some miss understanding with HP support. I am HP Business Partner Integration Engineer, last three to four years I have work with lot of HP backline support engineers there very prompt support when I have facing any problem. I have informed U one think HP never gets any support without support contract. Before U raise this issue cross check Ur support contract police.

[Note:- Support contract police H/W response time 4 hours & S/W response time 2 hours.]

BR/
Yaqub

[James M. Dunn]

Yaqub

Do you work for the HP support in Bangalore?

[Mike Bray]

Yaqub that is funny you made my day.....I think HP should continue to outsource support to India and Costa Rica as it's just so nice calling you guys now. The support has gone WAY DOWN HILL!!!!

[James M. Dunn]

This is how oyu fix em....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmGjq3cLG1g&feature=related