Interesting computer story from "The Corner." I agree with the advice of the guy at the end of it.
CRI DE COMPUTER [Peter Robinson ]
As I type this I am, as I have been for time on end, on hold, the phone balanced between my shoulder and my head, with a crick developing in my neck that's beginning to throb.
I suppose I should have known better. I went to Costco, and, thinking that by spending more rather than less money I'd be saving myself problems, bought the most expensive HP Pavilion computer that was on offer, a gorgeous system (or so I thought), with a gigantic monitor and an Pentium 4 processor running at 3.0 MHz. Spent a day-and-a-half setting up the machine and loading it up with our software. Yesterday, tug on sleeve.
"Dad, the computer isn't working."
"What do you mean? It's brand new."
"I know. But it still isn't working."
The problem? The kids' favorite game, Warcraft III, refused to boot up. I monekeyed with the computer for a couple of hours, involving my brother in all this by putting the poor man, who knows a lot more about computers than yours truly, on speakerphone, and keeping him there. All that we managed to achieve was the strange state of affairs in which, if you attempted to play Warcraft immediately after rebooting the computer, you do so between two and six times, but never again, instead getting an error message informing you that no CD was in the CD tray, even though there most certainly was.
Then I spent an hour on the telephone with technical support at Blizzard Entertainment, which makes Warcraft, and which is $40 to the better after my purchase of same. The techie had me download this and that patch, none of which work, and finally told me the problem lay in my having old drivers for my DVD-ROM and DVD+RW. The solution? Get in touch with HP. Which I did, instantly getting through to technical support, which is no particular surprise, since by now it was one in the morning. The HP techie listened to my woes for only a moment or two before suggesting that I take the machine back to Costco to have it replaced. Since I'd spent hour on hour setting the machine up in the first place, I went to bed last night feeling a strange combination of anger and fury.
Deciding to give HP one last try this morning, I called 1-800-HP-INVENT. After remaining on hold for 20 minutes, I finally got through to a technician who listened to my trouble, then said he'd transfer me to yet another technician. Ten seconds later, the line went dead. I called HP yet again. Yet again I remained on hold for a good long time. Yet again I got through to a technician, and this one actually sounded especially well-spoken, sympathetic, and determined to help. Five minutes into our conversation, the line went dead.
So here I sit, good readers. My brand-new, putatively slick-as-could-be HP computer has so far cost many, many hundreds of dollars of my extremely hard-earned money and almost two days of my life--two days in which I should have been playing with my kids, making notes on my next book, and, yes, watching Mrs. Miniver.
If anybody at HP technical support reads this happy Corner, would he kindly let Carly Fiornia know that the next time she gives an interview to Forbes or Fortune in which she blithely claims to be turning HP around, at least one of her customers will merely emit a bitter laugh.
Cri de Computer, Cont’d. [Peter Robinson]
Not long ago Carly Fiorina, chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard, merged HP with Compaq, dramatically expanding HP’s presence in the market for computers used in homes and small businesses. At the time, I thought the move made sense: If you’re going to be in a business, you might as well grab as much of the market as you can. But after working my way through the more than five dozen emails that I received yesterday, I’m beginning to wonder why Fiorna bothered.
One email, I should immediately note, came from Rosemary Shanahan, a “customer advocate” at HP headquarters here in Northern California. Accepting her invitation to give her a call, I quickly learned that Rosemary is
a) articulate and enormously charming, just the right sort of person to place in customer relations,
b) an admirer of Ronald Reagan (she had just finished Reagan: A Life In Letters, Rosemary explained, and intended to turn next to my own book, How Ronald Reagan Changed My Life, all of which I of course took as further evidence of point a)
c) determined to find someone at HP who can solve my problem. “We’ll bring this to a satisfactory conclusion,” Rosemary said. “That’s my promise.”
Rosemary has now assigned my problem to a case worker, from whom, she tells me, I can expect to hear tomorrow or early next week. Whereas the first person in the HP system with whom I spoke--a technician at a call center situated, to judge from the technician’s accent and the bad telephone connection, in India, Pakistan, or Bangladesh--listened to me describe what was wrong with my brand new computer for no more than two minutes before recommending that I exchange it, in Rosemary Shanahan I have found someone with enough loyalty to HP to want to fix the problem.
I’ve also learned that HP is full of such loyal employees. One sent me an email asking me to go easy on Carly Fiorina, arguing that she had inherited the company at a difficult time. Another sent emailed to apologize--apologize, mind you--for all the time I’d wasted working my way through HP’s system for customer support. (When I wrote yesterday’s posting, you may recall, I was on hold. When an HP operator finally answered, she explained that the company was overhauling its telephone lines. Then she cheerfully transferred me to a technician, whereupon, for the third time in a row, I found myself disconnected.) But why is HP in the computer business at all?
Whereas Apple designs and manufactures all its own components, I learned yesterday, HP, like Gateway and Dell, purchases its components from a variety of suppliers--my DVD-ROM drive, for example, was built by Samsung, my DVD+RW drive by Phillips. Managing this process--making certain that the dozens of components in each computer work well with each other and with the thousands of pieces of software with which they might be used--represents an enormously complicated business problem. Providing technical support for tens of thousands of customers represents a second such problem. Dell and Gateway have always been organized specifically to handle these problems. HP, a much older company, has instead had to learn how to handle these problems while continuing to handle the problems in its many other businesses. On the evidence of my inbox, HP has never even come close to succeeding.
Before I retired, one of my jobs in the Army was managing/developing/fielding a training simulation system. I was a $10mil customer of HP. And the customer service I got was no better than what you got.
I bought two [HP} Pavilions one year. They make excellent doorstops or boat anchors.
Trust me on this. I do PC support for a living and have worked on all brands of PC's. Take the HP back to Costco. Get a full refund. Get online and order a DELL.
I am a software engineer…and my job has exposed me to a wide variety of systems….If you want to stick to a name brand PC buy Dell or Gateway or if money is burning a hole in your pocket, Sony. If you want to go cheap, buy a system put together by Fry's…or one of those little independent computer stores. That way if something doesn't work, you can take it over there and yell at them in person. Just stay away from HP.
Which brings us back to my original question. Although her company seems to have been doing a mediocre job at best of selling mass-market PCs, Carly Fiorina went to great lengths to increase HPs commitment to the business, merging HP with Compaq. As my brother put it, “They were doing a lousy job in a terrible business--the margins on PCs are razor thin--so Fiorina decided she wanted more?”
I’ll let you know how things go with my HP case worker. And if the delightful Rosemary Shanahan can put me in touch with someone who can make sense of HP’s business strategy, I’ll let you know that, too.
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