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HP Businesses IT

HP Ends Forced 15-Minute Wait Times for Customer Support (arstechnica.com) 74

Posted by msmash from the quick-fix dept.
HP has ended its controversial practice of imposing mandatory 15-minute wait times for customer support calls in several European countries, following internal pushback and customer complaints.

The company confirmed the reversal and said it will "continue to prioritize timely access to live phone support."

HP Ends Forced 15-Minute Wait Times for Customer Support More | Reply

HP Ends Forced 15-Minute Wait Times for Customer Support

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  • Such a surprise (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Friday February 21, 2025 @12:42PM (#65185109)

    Greedy assholes get recognized as greedy assholes when they act blatantly obvious.

    • it was public knowledge. There are quite a few companies that (seemingly) deliberately make people wait, but this is not publicly stated.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        That is where the "assholes" comes in. Or maybe I should have written "stupid assholes"...

        These have one advantage, namely that they are obvious. Not because they want to be honest or something.

        • That is where the "assholes" comes in.

          How is it an asshole move to tell customers there is a minimum 15 minute wait, so they know what to expect - meanwhile the companies that HIDE a minimum wait are not the assholes??? What the heck.

          It may be stupid to have a minimum wait but telling customers what you are doing is ALWAYS better than hiding things like that from them.

          • It's not the fact that they are telling customers about the mandatory 15 minute wait, but the fact that they have a mandatory 15 minute wait at all. Do you understand what that means? Even if there is no one in the call queue at all, you still have to sit there for 15 minutes before the support staff are allowed to answer your call. Absurd! How would you feel if you went to an empty restaurant, and they made you sit out front for 15 minutes before seating you, for no reason.

          • Wait - can both of them not be assholes?

            --asking for a friend.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by gweihir ( 88907 )

              Obviously, they can. But one is selling things, the other is buying them. Slight difference in roles there.

      • Bet UK's HMRC does the same. Trying to get hold of anyone always means a 30 min wait.

    • Stupidity more than Greed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Roger W Moore ( 538166 ) on Friday February 21, 2025 @01:07PM (#65185235) Journal

      Greedy assholes get recognized as greedy assholes

      It is not so much greedy as just stupid. If you want to encourage your customers to use cheaper, online chat support then just reduce the number of phone operators. That way you immiediately save money and the increase in wait times will immediately encourage people to switch to online chat.

      Deliberately forcing a 15 min wait is just stupid: you will end up with operators you are paying sitting there waiting for a call while also really annoying your customers. Thus you end up paying more for a shittier customer experience. Even if you are stupid enough to think that is a good idea, telling everyone about it makes you look even more of an idiot.

      If we can't avoid having to deal with greedy companies is it too much to ask that we at least have intelligent, greedy companies?

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Greedy assholes get recognized as greedy assholes

        It is not so much greedy as just stupid.

        I agree. At least admitting this publicly was exceptionally stupid.

      • Deliberately forcing a 15 min wait is just stupid: you will end up with operators you are paying sitting there waiting for a call

        Oh, I suppose they staffed the call center so it was still understaffed and subject to long additional wait times, even after trying to drive customers away with the initial penalty box.

        It seems like they have probably run the numbers and discovered that "telephone-people" are not lucrative customers on average.

      • I think that the goal there is to make phone support so terrible that you use an AI chatbot for self-help instead. Then they get to lay off some stuff, and brag about their cost savings to the board. Sounds pretty greedy to me.

        • To be fair, Slashdot is mostly filled with tech savvy people who have a good cause when they call tech support. From their perspective, 95% of the calls are very simple things that an automated response can handle, 40% of which can be fixed by restarting the computer so that's their motivation for wanting to steer people there.

        • I think that the goal there is to make phone support so terrible that you use an AI chatbot for self-help instead.

          I get that - my point is that why not just do that then? It will save you more money doing it immediately (so you can be more greedy!) and at times when the call volume is low it will let you provide a better customer service (which is good if you are still one of their poor suffering customers). Just adding a 15 minute wait annoys your customers and wastes the time of phone support staff that you are paying for i.e. it costs you more and hurts your customers more.

          Greedy is bad enough but stupid and gre

      • Deliberately forcing a 15 min wait is just stupid: you will end up with operators you are paying sitting there waiting for a call

        The reason is obvious. Since some people will give up if there's any delay, they will hang up. This means less hiring staff in the call center.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by kenh ( 9056 )

          I hope they announce "We are presently experiencing a high volume of calls, you will be connected to the next available operator" while you wait...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kenh ( 9056 )

        If you want to encourage your customers to use cheaper, online chat support then just reduce the number of phone operators. That way you immiediately save money and the increase in wait times will immediately encourage people to switch to online chat.

        You are assuming they were keeping the same number of phone support people, that was not stated AFAIK.

        Deliberately forcing a 15 min wait is just stupid: you will end up with operators you are paying sitting there waiting for a call while also really annoying your customers.

        Without knowing the number of operators, the call volume, etc it's really hard to evaluate to savings or costs associated with the discussed changes.

        Personally, I find it hard to imagine that the executives that dreamed up the mandatory 15 minute wait to ostensibly save money never considered/didn't propose simply cutting down on the number of telephone support positions.

      • This is what happens when your only job is to make some "metrics" look good for your quarterly KPIs. The reality doesn't matter. Glad this got exposed because you're right, it's mind-bogglingly stupid.

    • Not until customers have the right to charge for their time spent fixing problem caused by a company will this be fixed. If your product is broken, has a non understandable interface for setting something then it should be the responsibility of the company to remedy that, at zero cost to the customer, and that zero cost should include the customers time. If customers start charging $100 dollars an hour, for to resolve an issue just see how fast customer service improves.

  • I would still boycott them (Score:3)

    by Holi ( 250190 ) on Friday February 21, 2025 @12:44PM (#65185119)

    But I haven't bought an HP product in who knows how long.

  • Is how everyone is doing these insane things where they're screwing me over and screwing everyone over too just to see what they can get away with. Throw shit at the wall and see how much bad stuff sticks.

    You're seeing it non-stop with the Donald Trump administration. About 80% of it they back down on but the remaining 20% sticks and it's going to hit hard.

    I'm reminded of when the Xbox One launched and Microsoft just had announcement after announcement of all these horrible things they were going to

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hwstar ( 35834 )

      Instead of companies working to provide products which delight customers, the new trend is to gradually enshittify everything until a slight loss of profitability occurs. What we need are progressive corporate taxes not based on income, but rather on the suitability of the goods that a company provides. For example, running a business which is a quasi-monopoly, pollutes the environment, designs products which intentionally don't last, or parasitizes its customers should result in a high corporate tax rate.

      • I'm not entirely sure why but that's clearly why you came up with something is ridiculous as taxes based on how cool or good a product is.

        It is of course impossible to quantify what you're saying. Worse getting rid of progressive taxes just shifts tax burden onto working Americans and off of billionaires.

        I'm honestly wondering if this is an AI bot coming up with random ridiculous ideas to attack the idea of progressive taxation or if you picked up these ideas from some random AI bot.

        Whatever the

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Whatever the case the actual solution is antitrust law enforcement so we can go back to having competition. Capitalism without competition is just fascism.

          Stop spamming this site! You keep on posting the same thing in a loop which makes it spam. You will be banned for spamming. Also, you are using alt accounts to manipulate the moderation system. You are defacing this site with your spam and other shenanigans:

          You posted the same just a few hours ago, see first item in references below!

          references:

          https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
          I suspect if we had proper antitrust law enforcement HP would not be allowed to do these kind of sweetheart up front deals that they

  • feel the hate (Score:4, Funny)

    by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Friday February 21, 2025 @12:47PM (#65185141)

    HP said it will "continue to prioritize timely access to live phone support." But also wants you to remember that they've rebranded to Hate People.

  • It's like with partners, once you realise someone's true colours are off, just write them off. Anna can reassure Barry she's not going to cheat on him with Charlie ever again, but no matter how much Barry believes that, we all know she's going to get Dick next....

  • You know that's the only reason.

  • So dumb (Score:3)

    by mukundajohnson ( 10427278 ) on Friday February 21, 2025 @12:58PM (#65185195)

    As if wait times are a new thing? Don't enforce an arbitrary 15 minute wait time. That will piss off your customers. Just overload the staff so that there is a natural 30+ minute hold time.

  • We are too busy to ignore you right now (Score:4, Funny)

    by ardmhacha ( 192482 ) on Friday February 21, 2025 @01:08PM (#65185239)

    Please leave a message and your call will be ignored in the order it was received.

  • "Press '7' for sanskrit..." (Score:4, Funny)

    by kackle ( 910159 ) on Friday February 21, 2025 @01:20PM (#65185267)
    So they're back to 45 minutes now?
    • Lol, no shit, right? On our IBM AIX support contracts we have a 2-hour SLA. I rarely see less than 4 hour responses (and always it's Indians). Fuck HP, HPE, and IBM. You reap what you sow.
  • Ha Ha haha Ha Ha Ha haha Ha Ha Ha haha Ha... HA! Ms. Streisand also says HA! FAFO

  • Doesn't surprise me a bit (Score:3)

    by RogueWarrior65 ( 678876 ) on Friday February 21, 2025 @01:21PM (#65185271)

    Customer support for so many companies is handled by people with a cultural attitude where they pretend to not understand you so you get frustrated and go away. And when you call them on the phone, their system says stupid stuff like "For information that you already knew and can be readily found in the manual or online, press 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or 0. For all other calls, go away."
    Go forbid that you are owed money from a company. They will find all manner of weasel ways to avoid coughing it up.

  • stupid idea turned out to be stupid

  • I like they changed due to internal pushback and customer complaints, not because its the right thing to do.
  • I don't get it. HP has robust competition in the printing area: Epson, Brother, and tons of no-name Chinese makers. What the heck are they thinking?

    • What the heck are they thinking?
      Some f-ing MBA calculated the relative costs of answering the phone versus making people go to the website, and came up with a "cost-cutting measure." The bastard probably got a promotion, too...

      • I was once on a flight to Boise, where the maximum likelihood technical employers were HP (printers) and Micron. Someone was in my assigned seat and refused to move. Having worked with former HP people, his grooming and clothing aligned with my HP junior management stereotype. He was displaying a Jack Welch book on his tray table. People like that.
  • At some point I start wondering if this is the corporate equivalent of a 3-year-old acting out - if you're feeling invisible, even negative attention feels better than being ignored.

    Maybe HP just needs some love. Unfortunately I suspect they demand alimony up-front, so they'll never get it.

  • "following internal pushback and customer complaints." Too little, too late

  • Someone is trying VERY hard to kill HP (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Oh really now ( 5490472 ) on Friday February 21, 2025 @02:30PM (#65185465)
    through bad business decisions. We used to be basically an exclusively HP (starting with Compaq since they were right around the corner) shop, from servers, to desktops, laptops, network infrastructure, and printers. All of that has gone by the wayside over the years, and none of it for religious reasons. The product has become undeniably worse. Servers are now Dell, desktops and laptops are a mix, networking went to Cisco, and printers are another non-HP mix starting in the 3000 series era where the Canon print engines came into play and the printers became unreliable junk. I miss the old HP you could rely on.

  • That if protests are strong enough, they can end certain things. If everyone now were extremely vociferous against AI, then we truly would have a better world.

  • SSA (Score:2)

    by aoism ( 996912 )
    Fifteen minutes? FIFTEEN MINUTES? Ha! That's kiddie stuff! *laughs at you in Social Security calls where wait times are 2-4 hours"

  • hp can absolutely go fuck itself

  • Perhaps HP, and all companies, should consider the reputational risk associated with their internal policies leaking to the public. If you aren't willing to publicly defend your policies, maybe they're bad policies!
  • Dell Sucks, HP sucks, Lenovo are the ChiComs... All of them suck!

  • "We at HP make PHB's, and sometimes printers and stuff."

  • Teacher here. Especially towards the end of the week kids are too tired to go for the answers themselves. When I was still a beginner, I just waited until they started doing it. It doesn't work. In a lot of cases, they have good reasons not to start. Drop a few hints, chit chat with them to find out what is going on. If they really are just lazy and hanging out? Put grades on the exercises and make them run.
    It took me a few weeks to figure that out and I am a bit slower at these things than my colleagues.

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