HP customer "service" never quite gets it right
Readers who have been following our customer "service" ordeal with Hewlett Packard over a defective ink cartridge will be amused to note that we received our replacement cartridge yesterday by Fed Ex Ground. Although we had mailed the defective one back (at our expense) to an HP person in Idaho, the replacement came from Duncan, South Carolina:
Of course, no contact with a customer ever comes without HP screwing up or one thing or another. In this case, they enclosed additional packaging that we are supposed to use to send the defective part back to them so that they can "analyse" it:
As we've mentioned, we already sent the bad cartridge back to HP in Idaho, and so this was a waste of their time and resources, and our time and garbage can space.
And with it all came the reminder that they are doing us a one-time favor. In the future, if we get a bad cartridge, we must call HP's customer "service" number, which will connect us with some incompetents halfway around the globe who will be telling us to "delete kookies" and "reinstall Veendos." No thanks. This printer is our last HP purchase, ever.
| Posted at 9:21 AM | Permalink |
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Comments (5)
I have a Canon printer (one at home, one in my office), and I've had no problems at all. Aside from the annoyance of having to buy cartridges (which applies regardless of printer brand), they're very well made. Definitely recommend Canon printers for your next purchase.
Posted by Dave J. | February 27, 2013 9:58 AM
HP made some good products in the 80s & 90s, and have been gliding on that reputation ever since, all the while, putting out one lousy thing after another and providing abysmal support. Like a lot of top-heavy legacy tech companies, look for them to slowly slip into total irrelevance in the consumer arena. (can you say IBM?)
Posted by ITGuy | February 27, 2013 11:34 AM
My HP gripe:
I've got an HP OfficeJet Pro 8500 and have had no problems with it over the past three years. My irritation is around a design 'feature'. To save energy the printer will go into sleep mode when it's not been used for a while. This is OK, but to let you know the printer is sleeping the lighted power button continuously flashes off and on. Up to now flashing lights have always meant 'problem' to me.
Posted by Rainfollower | February 27, 2013 1:33 PM
I used to adore HP printers; they produced great color prints of photos, small graphic compositions, magazine layouts and brochures that were almost as good as I could get at a print shop. Then I bought a new model and it was crap -- and expensive crap, because it went through ink like you wouldn't believe. So for my last purchase, I went for a fairly low-end Epson and am as happy as a clam. As others have said,HP doesn't produce the reliable printers they used to.
To be fair, I'm typing this on an old HP/Compaq laptop I bought at the Hollywood Fred Meyer probably in 2005. It's still chugging along fairly well.
Posted by talea | February 27, 2013 8:24 PM
My company was a HP dealer in the 80's and 90's. The attitude from all the HP reps were don't border to call us unless one of the Fortune 500 class clients needed something. Even though it started producing consumer class products in the early 90's, the corporate culture never warmed up to the lowly onesie twosie buying consumers. Apparently, that attitude has never changed.
Posted by TomC | February 27, 2013 10:20 PM