HP Deliberately Adds 15 Minutes Waiting Time For Telephone Support Calls (theregister.com) 158
HP will impose a minimum 15-minute wait time for consumer PC and printer support calls in five European countries, seeking to push customers toward digital channels, according to internal documents seen by The Register. The policy, implemented February 18, affects retail customers in Britain, Ireland, France, Germany and Italy. The outlet added that it anticipates "more countries could be added."
New Greeting (Score:5, Funny)
”Fuck You very much for calling HP today, how may I assist in ignoring you further..”
this call costs 0.69 euro per min! (Score:2)
this call costs 0.69 euro per min!
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this call costs 0.69 euro per min!
Ah, nothing quite like early cellular pricing with a splash of whore flair.
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Re: New Greeting (Score:2)
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HP Printers (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:HP Printers (Score:5, Funny)
Is there a single good reason to buy an HP printer over Brother?
Well..based on the ink consumption, we do know one thing.
HP swallows.
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The HP PageWide Printers were quite good, but expensive. These printers are unfortunately not available anymore. Have been using mine daily for about 6 years now.
I recommend Brother for consumer printers, as well.
Re: HP Printers (Score:3)
Re:HP Printers (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:HP Printers (Score:5, Informative)
You must not follow their software/driver install instructions closely though, install the minimum and don't use any wifi or networking features if you care about your privacy. Printers data gathering overreaches what is reasonable, they want to gather and exfiltrate whatever they can get their hands on.
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dafaq u mean with those driver madness?
brother laser printer are just generic network printer.
On linux IPP/cups with PostScript/PCL works just fine.
On windows you just use the brother universal PostScript/PCL driver. they are barebone driver and no crapware included. heck it even supports winxp.
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Re:HP Printers (Score:4)
10 years on the original toner cartridge? Are you still on your first reem of paper?
Re:HP Printers (Score:5, Interesting)
I think competition has broken down when HP makes decisions like these and doesn't expect Brother, Epson, et al, to run TV ads saying "HP hates you so much they intentionally make you wait 15 minutes if you call them. We don't. We actually like our customers and want you all to be happy with the stuff we sell you!"
It's like most giant corporations actively hate their customers and employees these days. Why?
Re:HP Printers (Score:4, Informative)
Is there a reason to call support? Support for computers, parts, and services are guaranteed to NOT be helpful. These are the least supported products in the world. Even paid computer support doesn't get you anything, nor Microsoft support, if you company has less then 200,000 employees.
But for a printer, and a cheap ass printer at that? What does anyone bother phoning?
Getting help from online support is what most people do first - so to be told to look at online support first when you phone it for some real help is insulting. The online support is for the obvious crap - did you put paper in the printer, have you tried turning it off and back on, how to buy a new printer at premium prices, etc. Nothing in there gives any help whatsoever in the event that your printer is shooting flames out the top.
"Thank you for your bug report, we'll get right to work ignoring it once our tech team stops laughing at you."
Re:HP Printers (Score:5, Informative)
Is there a reason to call support? Support for computers, parts, and services are guaranteed to NOT be helpful. These are the least supported products in the world. Even paid computer support doesn't get you anything, nor Microsoft support, if you company has less then 200,000 employees. But for a printer, and a cheap ass printer at that? What does anyone bother phoning?
Because the errors are inscrutable and the manuals uninformative.
Getting help from online support is what most people do first - so to be told to look at online support first when you phone it for some real help is insulting. The online support is for the obvious crap - did you put paper in the printer, have you tried turning it off and back on, how to buy a new printer at premium prices, etc. Nothing in there gives any help whatsoever in the event that your printer is shooting flames out the top.
Well, that one's easy. Put out the flames and buy a new printer. But-- "The "replace toner cartridge" light came on. I replaced the toner with a brand-new cartridge and the light is still on and it won't print. What do I need to do to get it to print?" "
etc. & ad infinitum.
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More than that, is there a single good reason to buy any product from HP? I cannot think of a single thing that they have which is worth buying.
We have some HP laser printers at work. They are absolutely fucking worthless in general (they hang at the least provocation and sometimes just eat print jobs completely with no sign they were ever received) and their cost per page is literally ten times that of our Canons.
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>Is there a single good reason to buy an HP printer over Brother?
You hate money AND free time?
HP is shite. I have a Brother laser printer from 2010 / 2011 or so that's on like the 5th or 6th toner cartridge and prints great. Never even replaced the drum. Just cheap toner.
Re: HP Printers (Score:2)
If there ever was, now there isn't.
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I used to be a loyal HP printer customer. My last three HP printers failed due to mechanical issues. Carly Fiorina told HP engineers "we don't have to design HP printers so strong you can stand on them". Beginning then, the mechanics of HP printers chronically failed. Add to that bloat ware, "subscription ink" and bricking printers.
I buy Brother printers now. Screw 'em.
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Is there a single good reason to buy an HP printer over Brother?
I would buy absolutely any brand over Brother. They are absolute garbage.
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I would buy absolutely any brand over Brother. They are absolute garbage.
I've got a Brother PSC which has been all but flawless (the Linux driver installation is a little bit irritating) with Windows, Linux, and Android. It even supports standards-based printing and scanning over the network. I got it when my HPLJ2100 didn't feed paper any more even after I put a kit in it, and I didn't want to have to dick with it any more. What's your problem with Brother?
Re:HP Printers (Score:5, Funny)
Re: HP Printers (Score:5, Funny)
Black humour.
Re:HP Printers (Score:5, Insightful)
Failure rate of business printers. HP fails less. Businesses pay more to fail less.
Given the insane price tags of larger MFPs, I’m betting most corporations don’t have a damn clue how often they fail.
Because they’re all leased hardware, and the only number that matters is 1-800-COME-FIX-YOUR-SHIT.
Hardware is replaced every 3-5 years. If we want to talk real longevity, go find the obscure-world office buying used MFPs with a few million miles on them to run for another decade.
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Well what's all this then?
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I have been perfectly happy with Cannon business class printers.
Been running a few in both my office and even one at home for years.
HP just seems to be trying to be consumer unfriendly with this move (not like they have not been consumer unfriendly with other moves over the years).
And this is me, speaking as someone who used to work in HP long ago.
Re: HP Printers (Score:3)
Be glad it scans without ink. Next thing you know they'll detect when the ink drops, and force you to buy another cartridge to scan.
Yay!! (Score:2)
HP Deliberately Adds 15 Minutes Waiting Time For Telephone Support Calls (theregister.com)
... and in other news, Hewlett Packard PC and printer sales decline sharply.
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Still not as much of a shit show as Dymo [betckey.com], though they're obviously trying to be.
At least HP doesn't sell printers that only print on HP branded paper (at five times the cost of anybody else's). Yet.
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This was basically how DEC went out of business. Remember them? Like HP, started as a high quality company that put customers first.
It became so successful the ship was boarded by thousands of mediocre rats - who sank it by focusing on cash and nothing else.
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This was basically how DEC went out of business. Remember them? Like HP, started as a high quality company that put customers first.
It became so successful the ship was boarded by thousands of mediocre rats - who sank it by focusing on cash and nothing else.
I think your version of the decline of DEC is a little too kind to the engineers that ran the company - their response to the IBM PC was an abomination called the Rainbow that was not BIOS-compatible, not expansion card compatible, used proprietary 5 1/4" floppies with incompatible formatting, and sold for a premium over the IBM PC/XT retail price.
DEC lost it's way, it wasn't just "thousands of mediocre rats...focusing on cash"
Re: Yay!! (Score:2)
Ditto Sun. Continued to charge stupid money for desktop workstations when x86 was quite obviously eating their lunch. On the server side also sky high prices with mediocre performance. Result - bought by Oracle when on the verge of bankruptcy.
Re: Yay!! (Score:2)
And Oracle bought Sun only to get Java so they could impose excessive license fees.
More time than it takes to buy Brother/Canon (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that HP printers - primarily the home user inkjet ones - require phone calls in the first place.
The HP Smart app, and the mandate for an online account to scan to a computer on the same LAN, and the InstantInk subscriptions that are the default without necessarily being clear, and the tying of a printer to an online account with a highly obfuscated means of avoiding it...I'm sure that many, many of the support calls can be tied to these things.
So, it seems like a self-inflicted wound. I'll still sometimes opt for HP Enterprise printers that still avoid most of this, but comparatively few people are willing to start the bidding for their new printer at $1,200. Canon and Brother have still managed to avoid the worst of this anti-consumer push in their $300-$700 product ranges.
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(Glances at printer... Oh, it's a Lexmark).
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Every time I see one of these articles I remind myself how I splurged to get a combination laser printer/scanner/fax.
Got mine somewhere ~15 years ago. Bought three ink replacements since then. Printer and scanner still works perfectly. Never got around to using the fax capabilities. (lol) Still perfectly well supported in Linux.
Don't plan to replace it until part of it breaks.
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But it's even simpler and as usual nastier than that. HP has enough capital to basically give away incredibly expensive printers and then make all the money back on the ink and toner. What they don't give away they have payment plans for. So basically much lower up fron
Re: More time than it takes to buy Brother/Canon (Score:3)
A printer requiring an online account? Fuck this. For me personally, this destroys the deal. For everyone else, it should too.
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Would cause a PostScript printer connected to a computer to print a PostScript file. Printing was way less complicated 35 years ago than it is today. The irritation back then was "fonts sold separately".
The crazy complexity we have is all due to business executives trying to figure out how to make money without having to innovate in engineering. Rather than making a better printer (or better printer factory) to compete, they inject complexity to ext
Here's your opportunity EU!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Unfortunately regulation takes time, so they'll probably get away with it for a while before eventually being slapped down. A similar thing happened with automotive OEMs that were intentionally trying to cripple their vehicles and restore them to normal behaviour behind a subscription model.
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Regulation does but litigation doesn't. In the UK someone could make a claim that this amounts to age discrimination, as the elderly are less likely to be able to solve the problem via digital channels. As there is a cost being imposed in terms of time and potentially money, depending on how the call is placed, HP may struggle to defend this in court.
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Pass a law mandating a MAXIMUM wait time of 5 minutes for human phone support.
* 4 minutes, 55 seconds..56 seconds..57 se.. *
”Fuck you for calling HP, please hold.” *click*
30 GOTO 10
Needless to say one can see that bullshit loophole a mile away.
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Oh, and... if the customer is cut off the company is fined $1,000. Each time.
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Pass a law mandating a MAXIMUM wait time of 5 minutes for human phone support.
That won't work.
Once upon a time, in England/UK patients of the NHS (their single-payer health insurance plan for all, yay!) had to wait a really long time before seeing a doctor, so the helpful politicians passed a law that a patient had a right to see a doctor within a short time after checking into the ER. Guess what happened?
ERs, afraid of violating the law, forced ambulances and patients wait outside the hospital until they had a doctor ready to see them within the mandated window - no one saw a doctor
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Erm. What do you mean with that? My M2070 fails to scan at about 9 times out of 10. 10/10 if I change any settings such as DPI or color/b&w. The most recent driver is from 2017. What is their answer to that? "Buy a new printer" ?
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Re:Here's your opportunity EU!!! (Score:5, Informative)
You've got the wrong end of the stick, dear boy.
The ambulances are queueing because A&E is full, and A&E is full because there are no ward beds to transfer patients who need to be admitted as in-patients, and that's because the beds are blocked by elderly patients who need residential or home care arranged before they can be discharged but none is available, because local government funding (which pays for this) has been greatly reduced since 2010.
Nothing to do with service time guarantees. Those only applied to GP appointments, not A&E.
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This Video is from last month [youtube.com], when 15 ambulances were tied up waiting to check their patients into one hospital.
What a true mastery of bullshit you have there. Make a statement that is true, and then follow it up by an out of context video showing something that people may believe is related to the statement.
Unfortunately it is nothing more than you spreading bullshit and fake news. That video shows ambulances queuing due to the full emergency rooms thanks to the bird flu outbreak. The best place to be when you can't physically be in the hospital due to overcrowding is to be in the ambulance. The video has precisely
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Wow. This is the wrong way to solve a simple problem.
Let me help you out a bit.
Easy solution (Score:2)
Don't purchase HP products and you won't have to put up with their wait time. You're welcome.
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Or, you know, learn to use their website? I have been in IT for over 30 years, and I've never had to call human technical support to attach a printer to a desktop or server - support websites? sure, but to actually have to call someone and get help over the phone? I never even knew it was an option.
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i think you're idealizing what phone support does anyway. IRL there's no "shiboleet" (https://xkcd.com/806/)
All the phone support is going to do really is serve as an interface on their support knowledgebase anyway and it's aimed at more at "your parents" and/or office manager than engineer or sysadmin.
For anything that an end user would be able to address on site it's likely that the majority of slashdot readers will outperform HP's L1 and L2 phone customer support in identifying an issue if given acce
great idea! (Score:2)
I want this on my own phone!
Unspeakably sad to those of us who remember ... (Score:5, Informative)
The future is cool in a lot of ways, but we lost something when HP ceased being HP.
Re: Unspeakably sad to those of us who remember .. (Score:3)
HPE is the real HP. What's known as HP now is just the remains of the consumer division slowly swirling around the bowl. In 10 years itll be gone.
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Yep, back in the early 90s, HP laser printers were practically unbreakable. We used them in a distribution warehouse. All other brands of printers were constantly breaking, but not HP. Those days are gone.
rebranded (Score:5, Insightful)
Hate People
It's okay (Score:3)
And those major shareholders certainly wouldn't all be sitting on the same board of directors with each other and going to the same golf clubs and talking about implementing this policy across all the companies that they own.
I mean that would just be wrong wouldn't it?
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"Customer Service." (Score:3)
I was there when "customer service" turned from something provided by a company in order to foster repeat purchases and make sure customers felt they had someone to go to when they needed help into something driven by statistics like, "Time on call" and "sales made per call." Now we're pushing into, "Fuck the customer, force them to automation even if it doesn't actually do anything." The number of businesses I have to deal with where the only option to get to a human is to play some form of game with the automated systems trying to find that one obscure menu option that results in a human picking up is . . . well, it's big. Too big. Granted, one would be too many, but it's far more than one.
It feels very much like the entire business world is sliding backwards, and the C suite all seem to see it as progress.
Re:"Customer Service." (Score:4, Insightful)
Economics 101, long ago, said that all suppliers would compete to lower prices, improve quality, and increase customer satisfaction. Or else they would be forced out of business.
Economics 101 didn't mention that the process works equally well in reverse - and with much less trouble. All suppliers simply agree to increase prices, reduce quality, and antagonise the customer.
"What are they going to do - buy from Mars?"
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Economics 101, long ago, said that all suppliers would compete to lower prices, improve quality, and increase customer satisfaction. Or else they would be forced out of business.
Economics 101 didn't mention that the process works equally well in reverse - and with much less trouble. All suppliers simply agree to increase prices, reduce quality, and antagonise the customer.
"What are they going to do - buy from Mars?"
It doesn't help that we've had very little regulation when it comes to consolidation so a lot of companies are collapsing into few major players in certain spaces who, ultimately, are owned by the same investment groups in the background. Or at the absolute best are owned by investment groups made up of individuals that act as "friends" and run in the same circles.
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I'm to the point with Geico auto insurance that I almost want to get into another accident so I can be treated like a king once again. Any time I have to talk to them is a pleasure. I know I'm not getting the cheapest insurance, but when I need it (due to stupid people running into me
Why? (Score:2)
I Wonder (Score:3)
I wonder if HP found/feels that the vast majority of support calls for their consumer printers could be answered in 15 minutes on their support website? I'm not defending the move (it's horrible), but I suspect they feel their web support resources are under-utilized and they are trying to break the habit of picking up the phone when you can't figure out how to install a windows driver or what an error code means...
Bye bye (Score:3)
"The outlet added that it anticipates "more countries could be added.""
I anticipate that no more HP products will be bought.
The bright side (Score:2)
This seems sub-optimal (Score:2)
If you really want to drive customers away from talking to a live customer support person, then why stop at a 15 min wait? An hour or so would seem better, and would have the added benefit or tying up the support lines so other callers just get busy tone.
But, why stop there? Some people may be ok with being put on hold for an hour, and maybe even enjoy the elevator musak you play to them.
To really drive the callers away, it'd seem better to make it a truly horrible experience. Instead of elevator musak, how
HP the safe choice, not (Score:2)
The last product I brought from them was a 'convertible' laptop. It will only charge from a few of my 65W+ USB-C PD power supplies. It clearly does not follow the PD standard and is charger brand/model selective. Do you t
I can imagine a future... (Score:2)
...where AI customer support is perfected and supplies the accurate answer to any question
Unfortunately, today's "virtual agents" suck mightily
Online knowledge bases are a tiny bit better, but still suck
Forums are filled with people asking the same question and getting no answer
Phone calls go to a clueless moroon with a simple script
Wow (Score:2)
That is one of the dumbest business decisions I have ever seen. Maybe, just maybe, they could have solved this problem by not having such shitty products that they require people to call support in the first place? Just a thought.
If you still use a printer... (Score:2)
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Someone with children may need to print arithmetic drill worksheets for their children to complete. How else is an arithmetic drill at home supposed to be accomplished without a printer and without screen time?
Enough time (Score:2)
Great, that's enough time to have a quickie with my wife.
Sorry, babe, the AirPods stay in during sexy times. I'm on hold with HP because I gotta fix the printer.
Common Practice (Score:3)
I worked for a call center company that handled Comcast. We intentionally had a mandated hold time of something like 3-5 minutes, so the customers never assumed they could get through immediately. It set forced expectations.
Even if agents were available for a call.
Smack them (Score:2)
When business intentionally cripples it's own service there are two avenues for redress. Regulation, and market pressure.
It's not like anybody is forced to buy HP products. Seems like market pressures are the fix here.
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The likelihood of customers even knowing this is an issue when they make the purchase is going to be very low. I doubt there would be any market pressure.
Write HP off (Score:2)
and tell everyone else to. It's not worth it. Companies that serve themselves should be buried. A customer relationship should be two-way.
It'll cost them money in some countries (Score:2)
New Zealand for one, an 0800 toll-free number is free for anyone to call, even mobile phones.
The owner of the 0800 number pays the cost of the call.
Time (Score:2)
Sets time for 15min.
RIP (Score:3)
Not digital channels but competitors (Score:2)
"seeking to push customers toward digital channels"
No HP isn't pushing customers toward digital channels. It's pushing its customers toward its competitors.
I added 150 years for buying next HP printer (Score:2)
IT Decision maker (Score:2)
As an IT decision maker for a mid size enterprise, I do my small part against shit companies like this. When I encounter sales from companies like HP or Cisco or Lexmark or AT&T at an enterprise level, I make sure and let the sales people know that I will not use their products no matter how good their enterprise lines are because of the shit way other divisions in their company treat customers. Most of the time consumer divisions, but sometimes even enterprise is treated like shit. I turned down a $300
HP is a zombie corporation roaming... (Score:2)
HP has been crap for a long time now (Score:2)
This just fits the picture.
Yet another reason (Score:2)
Just another reason on an already very large pile of reasons to never buy HP products. I'm not sure what else they could possibly do to demonstrate how little they care about their actual customers. I can't imagine the ridiculous board meeting that lead to this policy. Good god, what were the other, less palatable options?
This is also double insulting because if the typical user is like me, I'm calling the company because I've already exhausted the online support options. So that 15 min wait is a punishment
Who does HP think they are, Sears? (Score:3)
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There's always idiots out there. I go to OfficeMax or whatever, look online at Amazon, and HP printers *look* very competitive and good.
You have to dig into off-site reviews and look up the company to find out the horrors of long term ownership, over the people reviewing who are still on their first ream of paper.
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I feel like a lot of older folks still associate it with its decades old reputation from when they made a good product. I know my Mom went out and bought herself a new HP printer about a year ago after I specifically told her that was one of her worst options. When I asked her about it she had completely forgotten my advice, she just had drilled into her head HP = good.
Most folks dont pay enough attention to tech to be able to effectively know what brands are worth buying and which aren't. That is especiall