So the Recovery CD's I expected to arrive yesterday via FEDEX Next Day Air never arrived.
I spent an hour and twenty minutes on the phone with HP support. I spoke with FIVE DIFFERENT PEOPLE! EVERY one of them asked me the same 10 minutes of questions (my name, my address, my phone number, serial number of the computer, product ID number, etc) and EVERY ONE OF THEM would repeat this annoying two minute Privacy statement.
I had to repeat myself anywhere from 2 - 4 times on EVERY QUESTION because they no understand the english so well!
No one could help me find out when these discs were gonna arrive, they just kept handing me off.
FINALLY after 80 minutes on my cell phone I'm told they were sent via regular mail and I should have them sometime after September 12'th!!!
THANK GOD I bought my PC at Sam's Club. They have a VERY liberal 6 month return policy! So I am writing from my BRAND NEW COMPUTER
I will NEVER, EVER, buy another HP Product again. In fact, I will NEVER buy another PC from a company that uses overseas support.
I'll pay the extra and have one of our local PC places build one for me if I have to. Atleast I'll know I have decent support that way.
I will say I am so far somewhat impressed with Canon support. I called twice yesterday and talked to two different people. The menu selections were just to get me to the right product support area.
The first call was about a 10 minute wait, the second was only about 3-4 minutes. Both people could speak and understand our native language. The first person understood the problem quicker than the second, but both quickly came to the conclusion that I needed to send the camera in for repair.
They said it will take 3-5 days for them to process the repair request after they receive it, and then 7-10 days to actually do the repair and send it back. If they stay within those times, I should have it back in time for the boy's birthday.
Knowing that with Canon, I can call and talk to a human that I can communicate with, will most likely effect my next buying decision when I am shopping for something they offer. Maybe Canon "gets it", I don't know, but its too bad so many don't.
I hear you on the HP customer service JR! I bought my computer about 9 months ago....three months after I bought it, the CD/DVD drive went out. I called HP......the first time I was on the phone with some guy from India for 3 hours, from 9:00 pm to 12 midnight.....he couldn't fix the problem via remote assistance. He then wanted me to hold while he got someone else for me to speak to.......I told him I'd call them back the next day as it was getting too late at night to fool around with it any longer. Next day I called back, got another guy from India........after 2 hours on the phone with him, he told me I needed to send in the CD/DVD drive......but first I had to have $500 available on my Visa so they could send me out a new drive......he said once they received the non-working drive, they'd remove the $500 charge from my Visa for the brand new drive.
Um, excuse me, but there's no way in hell that drive was $500!!! So I ate the loss on the non-working drive and replaced it myself with another one for a lot less than $500.
I too will never again buy another HP computer or printer. I've had numerous problems with my 4 in 1 printer from them.
By the way, a lot of anti-virus software uses a lot of over-seas tech support too.........can't understand those guys either.
So ALL this waiting for my recovery discs because they claim they sent them via regular snail mail, so far nothing.
Then last night I get an email confirming my order for two recovery CD's and it says they have been shipped via FedEx Overnight (which is what they ORIGINALLY SAID THEY WERE SHIPPING THEM AS!).
I checked online and sure enough, the discs are due to be delivered today by FedEx!
WTH is going on at HP!?!?! Wait nearly two weeks to ship the CD's and THEN pay the crazy price of Overnight shipping? And why lie to the customer in the first play and tell em' they're coming FedEx, then say they're coming First Class Mail, then actually ship em' FedEx after sitting on em' for 11 days?!?!
Well, jokes on them. I returned their crappy computer to Sam's Club and I'm on the new one right now. For the most part it works excellent! So now I got my recovery CD's as a back up AND a new computer, and they'll have a broken peice of crap being returned to them!
I stand by my previous statement though, I WILL NEVER, EVER, BUY ANYTHING THAT HP PRODUCES AGAIN!
Hey man, you're just giving a consumer alert, now we know what not to buy.
Speaking of customer service, both good and bad (good in this case), I'm impressed with Twitter's tech support. Back when I first started using Twitter, I saw the ability to use your cell phone, so I thought I'd try it out. Well, it didn't work for me because I'm on a prepaid sucky plan that doesn't work with most SMS services. For some reason, I went ahead and submitted a support ticket about it. I got a personalized reply back (not a bit of a form email) that gave me an alternate number to text to. I did and it worked! They fixed it on the first try!
That was quite a few months ago, whenever Webguy first introduced us to Twitter. Well, recently I noticed that I couldn't post from my phone any more. So I submitted a support ticket. I expected a form response saying tough luck, they don't offer it to cheap people like me any more. Instead, I got another personalized response back saying they did discontinue the other number, but they checked it out, and the SMS should work for me. She ended the email with, "We will make this work for you!" Granted, I tried it and it doesn't, but I really appreciate the extra effort and personal service.
I really only text to Twitter occasionally. I do most of my tweeting during the day at work. A local blogger looked me up on Twitter and he posts several times a day, so it's really got me into it.
I'm sure 98% of us who have worked in a call center will agree with me, after taking 100 calls a day that taking care of the customer sometimes (most of the time) wasn't top priority on our list. Especially when the center itself times you on each of your calls, and makes you fill a quota of number of calls you NEED to take per day to keep your job. Another words get them on and get them off as fast as you can.
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Sometimes, when i'm lonely... i crawl into a laundry basket and tickle my ears. But, Some times I don't...
My complaint is very rarely with the person answering the phone, it's with the company that puts the call center in place with crappy policies to begin with.
Even after talking to five different people from the middle east a few weeks ago and wasting nearly an hour and a half on my cell phone, I wasn't really angry at the people I was talking to and I remained pleasant until the very end (and even then I was polite, but more forceful).
These companies that want to earn their money in America need to start offering American support though. And they REALLY need to offer higher quality support.
I agree, it's rarely the customer service people themselves. If they enjoyed their job, it would show through on the phone. So many call centers micro-manage to the point that it probably would be better to have robots.
So I ate the loss on the non-working drive and replaced it myself with another one for a lot less than $500. 
