Poor Customer Service

[MonicaWebb]

We purchased a notebook from HP on 2/15/09 and we started having minor issues with it almost immediately. I would contact online chat support and spend at least an hour trying to explain my issue and I would end up fixing the problem myself. The support reps seem eager to get you off the chat line and don't try to resolve your problem. Well, on 5/31/09 I contacted HP chat support again regarding my notebook. It would not boot up and gave me an error message. I went through trouble shooting with 2 reps and our chat session mysteriously ended on one and the other I had to cut it short because I had to leave. The third rep I got tried walking me through the BIOS and tested the hard drive. That's when we found the issue to be a bad hard drive. She arranged to have a replacement hard drive shipped to me which was great. I felt like my issue had been resolved and I was happy. Then my husband told me that he was contacted by a representative of HP and he explained that he needed a credit card number before he ships the replacement hard drive. Hopefully they do not fraudulently charge our card. But anyhow, the representative also said that we will need to use the recovery disc that came with the notebook in order to restore the system. Our notebook did not come with a recovery disc so we told him that we will need one. He promised to ship one out with the replacement hard drive. Well, the replacement hard drive arrived yesterday without a recovery disc. So I contacted HP online chat. Before I explain the rest of the story I must say that HP customer service, both online chat and telephone is terrible. Not only do customers have to wait an extended amount of time to get a representative but the online chat reps do not read everything you type them or they don't understand what you're saying because they ask  the same questions repeatedly even after you tell them several times. And the phone reps have very heavy accents which makes it impossible to communicate effectively. As a customer, this is very frustrating because this tells us that we are not important enough to pay the extra money to employ agents that are proficient in our language. Anyhow, back to the original issue. So I contacted online chat and the rep directed me to a link to place the order for a recovery disc even though my notebook is under warranty. I refused to order it because I refuse to pay for it. So the rep asked me to call the 1-800 customer service number. I called the number and waited on hold for 45 minutes before I got an agent. The agent had me explain the issue to him and assured me that my issue will be resolved, after speaking to him for 30 minutes he explained that he needed to transfer me to someone to place the order for the recovery disc. When the agent from the order department came on the line I explained to her that my cordless phone was now going to die because of the amount of time i was on the phone. I begged her to take my number down and call me back in the event that the phone died while I looked for another phone. The phone died and I never got a call back. At this point, I was more than frustrated. I tried online again while I charged my phone and the online agent kept referring me to a link to place the order but when I refused he then asked me to go to Best Buy. Best Buy cannot help me with this issue. So I requested to speak to his supervisor. He then tells me that he is a supervisor and his demeanor instantly changed. He reassured me that he will place the order for the recovery disc for me. After waiting about an hour, he tells me that he encountered an error when processing the order and he cannot help me and that I have to call the 1800 number again. So, I call the 1800 number and the wait time was minimal because it was 11 pm. And yet again, the rep reassured me that my issue would be resolved. 30 minutes late and after being transferred to the order department, I was asked to call again because they encountered an error while processing the order and the error cannot be resolved.

HP, I am the customer. I should not be expected to jump through hoops to have a simple issue resolved. I am to the point where I will NEVER purchase another HP product again and I will be sure to write about this on my blog so that all of my friends and family know how terrible HP's customer service is.

[SandyD]

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