Worst...Customer...Support....Ever!

OH, you are NOT the first! I brought this up about 13 or so years ago when I got an *****EXPENSIVE***** printer. It was over $1300, and we got it SPECIAL ORDER.

It came WITHOUT a manual. When I called HP, they didn't know WHAT I was talking about that it didn't come with a PCL manual. All other HP printers, and even LICENSEE printers I got always did! She said that I could get it to work by installing the wordperfect printer driver disk on my computer. I kept trying to explain why it was IMPOSSIBLE!!!!!!!

1. The driver could NOT know what it had to do since there was NO manual for it.
2. The driver could NOT connect with UNIX since it was made for Wordperfect.
3. I did NOT have wordperfect.
4. The driver was NOT made for SCO UNIX.

I kept trying to tell that IDIOT that I was a programmer and I was writting the routine to interface with the printer. I could NOT use ANY application printer driver even if it DID work, and this one could NOT!

It took a LONG time for them to figure out what I wanted, and they said it would cost $99!
BTW I WOULD have just used an old book I had, or bought one from a local store, but this was a NEW expanded printer with an EXTENDED language. THAT was the reason why we got it.

Steve

Used a hp printer for a long time. Very touchy products come from hp. Gave up on customer service from them a long time ago. Had better luck downloading drivers and such from their site. Have trouble getting the HP ink cartridges to work. Time to buy a new printer... HP - not.

Calling anyone's customer support for any reason pretty much blows.

The menus are always a coin toss. I've used very few that don't annoy
me.

And Comcast? Big grrr. You get hit with advertising for who knows how
many products, services, ppv specials, etc while you're waiting for this,
then that. And ******* THEN ******** the person comes on and
the first thing they ask you is if you'd like to try this, or that - whatever.

Nothing wrong with marketing/advertising, but it's a bit much with them.


Ken

I ended up on the line with the VP of marketing when I had problems with Clear. That was 10 days into why can't I get my damned internet connection and phone line. They just upped my price, so I've just written him another letter. IF they don't drop the price back to where it was, I'm off VOIP and getting Skype. The connection I'm getting now isn't even worth the original price let alone a raise in price. Corporations are going nuts across the board. It's about time we started putting the screws to them if they can't handle a little CS. A company who thinks they are too good for their customers can be brought down real fast by a major walk out -- AOL learned that the hard way. They barely saved their butts when people started dropping them en mass a few years back. Time to teach a few more companies what customers are all about.

Ya know Sal, you just reminded me of something.
Probably some of the best customer service I have gotten was with Vonage.
I have been with them over 5 years and the price has never gone up.I know I am going to pay about $32 a month.
Well, except recently I had to call the about something and before I got off the phone with them, they had not only asnwered my problem, they told me since I was a long time customer they were cutting my bill in half, so now I am paying $12.50 a month (plus taxes which makes it almost $20,but still.....)
Kudos to Vonage.

haha Yeah what HP calls "customer service" truly does suck. Acer support sucks too. I switched to Mac and bought a nice Lexmark printer (this thing is awesome) and haven't looked back. Let's not forget Best Buy, they suck too.

So many stories of poor customer service particularly whenever the phone is involved and in that regard I have to say Dell is the absolute worst with the endless 'press # for ____' and after several of those to add insult to injury when you get a live person they transfer you again - bad enough except the next thing you hear is a dial tone where you start over.

But my most recent rage is this. A hosting company where we have a mutual client. The client has not been able to see the site I installed 9 days ago because her DNS was set wrong by the hosting company. I can see that the welcome letter they sent the customer and the settings on whois.net match, but the cpanel stats are different.

They always give me a hard time because I am a 3rd party and they won't change something without confidential info I don't have since I am not the customer. All this is irrelevant since it is their mistake and I have proof that they can see the same as me.

After telling the customer who is in the UK to contact the host she comes back and says she doesn't have a clue what I am talking about. So Saturday I go to their live chat and I put all the DNS settings in there and the whois report. OK the guy will talk to his supervisor. wait wait wait wait. OK we will take care of it.

Tuesday the customer contacts me again and says she still can't see her site. So I decide to call their tech support as usually the phone support is a little sharper than the chat guys. OK he sees what I mean and will talk to the server administrator. He even asks for my phone number in case we get cut off - wait wait wait wait (I am talking 30 minutes) no dial tone but just dead air. So I hang up and figure he will call me back.

30 minutes later I call again - no record of my call or any comment on the issue from either contact. BUT the guy does fix it this time. I couldn't believe it...

Over the years I have come to realize that the bigger the company you are dealing with the worse the customer support. In general just the way customer support over the phone is designed, sucks. The first ten minutes of your call usually starts with listening to the different options before they finally tell you to press 9 to speak directly to a representative.

You know the CS where you have to select the options with numbers are still better than the ones where they have speech recognition. I spent 20 minutes shouting the name of a movie i wanted to watch at a cinema's CS line!