See title...

It's HP's customer centric way of saying "Eff off and don't come back"

just type the word fuck, no one is going to get upset.

After being extremely rude to their fuckwit chatbot, I was told 10 mins phone wait time to speak to a person. I hung on and seemingly the chatbot didn't have the level of clearance to resolve my problem anyway as the Internet is too insecure. Who knew!

I do that, swear at the chatbots until they put me through to a person.

... since I will not buy anything from you (HP) again.

To never by HP again. Laserjet 4 was my last good experience...

If this is for calls to a revenue generating phone number (i.e. many NGNs) then they can expect a call from OFCOM.

> If this is for calls to a revenue generating phone number (i.e. many NGNs) then they can expect a call from OFCOM.

If this is for calls to a revenue generating number then I hope they can expect a call from the Fraud Office with appropriate criminal charges for Directors and baned from the gravy train holding directorships.

Do people still print things? The last time I printed anything was three jobs ago and pre-pandemic.

15 minutes wait time sounds rapid compared to the usual wait times with my bank, utilities, post office, etc.

Because, I guess, MS Office use isn't a thing o_O

If you print your stamps and postage labels and book the postie to pick them up then you don't have to queue in the post office. However, my printer's not quite good enough to avoid going to the bank.

No need for labels or stamps nowadays with https://stampfree.ai/

People need to print receipts, invoices, delivery notes, labels, etc etc - not all of thar became electronic only.

I spent last weekend printing and framing photos for an exhibition (not on an HP printer). Maybe one day e-ink frames will change that too, but right now they are not up to the task yet.

Now I have to ask a quote for a 14"x70" print... I can't do that myself. Probably it will print faster than the HP evil delay...

"Maybe one day e-ink frames will change that too"

No, never, its always good to have physical photos as digital media can fail. Yes, photos can but ours from the 70s, 80s and 90s have lasted and my parents ones from the 50s and 60s, including slides are still all fine.

I miss Cibachromes from Kodachromes. Ah, good times.

That's your takeaway, that the main point of this story is about Printing, and comparing to the worst examples you can find ?

It's corporate abuse of individual customers, due to laziness and stupidity of callous management.

"It's corporate abuse of individual customers, due to laziness and stupidity of callous management."

So, standard modern American business practices then?

Yes, though not very often, and certainly not often or regularly enough for an instant ink subscription to make sense.

Yes, sheet music and concert tickets. Phone batteries are not that reliable, especially when the insurance black box in my car connects to the app and turns the phone GPS on so it can track me, that flattens the battery in hours if I forget to connect the charge cable in the car.

"We are experiencing longer waiting times"

No, you are creating longer waiting times.

At least we have it confirmed that they're outright liars.

Unfortunately lying is not a criminal offence. It never will be. If it was members of Parliament would be some of the first arrested.

See Wales - lying in their Parliament will become a criminal offence.

If lying were criminal we wouldn't have government. The world over.

Depending on the circumstances lying can be criminal - think fraud for example.

> "We are experiencing longer waiting times"

They could avoid lying by changing it to say

"You are experiencing longer waiting times"...

Seems that these clowns do not understand that people use the telephone because their digital support channels have failed to provide the information that the customer needs.

HMRC is particularly guilty of this, the website is generally an unmitigated failure and even the simplest question can't be handled by it.

But since their outsourced mess continues to hit the false metrics that were dreamt up by someone without a clue we'll continue to have to suffer this way in the name of progress.

AI bots have just added to the torture.

Exactly. Surely nobody's first choice is to pick up the phone and deal with hold music, glacial voice menus, clueless call-centre staff, etc. Personally if I'm phoning support, it's an absolute last resort after all other possible avenues have failed.

This is absolutely true, but with the minor caveat that there's never any point in first checking if the website will frustrate you this time.

That simply is not true. There's a load of useful information on various gov.uk websites, calculators for tax and SSP etc. True, for more complex queries you'll have to read the rules and calculate yourself, and finding some of the information is not always straightforward, but to say it can't even handle simple questions really is inaccurate.

I generally know the answer to the question, but if you need HMRC to actually do something other than accept a tax return submission, then you usually can't do that online.

I'm sure it's true that the ability to do self service on the website is lacking, although it must be better than it was years ago.

However, that is quite some way from saying there is no information to answer the simplest of queries, when there clearly is. 'Handling a very simple query entirely specific to my NI number' is entirely different.

People use the telephone because their digital support channels have failed

The thing is, the people sitting around developing "user stories" for digital channels don't have much imagination beyond their own personal circumstances.

I recently needed to pay in a cheque on behalf of an elderly relative. Not possible using the banking app because I'm not the account holder. The only bank branch within 10 miles was closed owing to being vandalised. Can't do it at a Post Office because I don't have printed paying-in slips. Can't order those via the app either.

And then I needed to pay in a cheque to myself. Not possible using the banking app because it was a company cheque and not a personal cheque and the app doesn't recognise the format. I did get through to the help line and was told I'd have to go to branch. The was open and which had a cheque deposit machine. I then got an e-mail from the bank chastising me for using the machine instead of the app.

The aim of these digital channels seems to be to offer only 50% of the full range of services and keep the remaining users at arm's length so that their dissatisfaction never appears in the metrics.

Do they honestly think that everyone *wants* to speak to a script-reading call centre drone who possesses broken English, who cannot understand what is being requested? The last thing anyone wants is to deal with them as it is so difficult. When it gets to that point I've exhausted *every* avenue - google, reddit. newsgroups, crappy HP website. The call centre is truly the last resort.

HP are absolute garbage, both in hardware and support.

Apologies for the rant.

I have one final HP laptop on the shelf. It's about 12 -13 years old. It gets donated to a thrift shop today. Apparently HP doesn't want to deal with consumers anymore.

I have a 1982 HP-11C calculator. It still works perfectly, is extremely well-made, and thankfully does not require support. I wouldn't dream of buying an HP product nowadays. How the mighty have fallen.

Still have my (battery-less) HP-41C and HP-25 in a drawer somewhere. They remind me of when HP was a good company. Whatever this is, it's not HP, even though it may be wearing the same name.

:-(

I have an HP 16C 1 "Programmer's Calculator" (computes in decimal, hex, octal, and binary) that I bought somewhere around 1982 that's been dropped, kicked, run over by office chairs, and suffered who knows what other mishap and abuse and it, too, is still running just fine. I've only had to replace the batteries once in 40-some years of use.

I don't use it all that often any longer but it's sitting in my desk drawer and works every time I need it.

Over the years, I've had two or three HP laptops and they've all fallen apart after only moderate use 2 , and that's not to mention the abominable WiFi performance.

I'm not a big believer in the Good Old Days , since mostly they weren't all that good, but if there were such a thing, this little gadget is an exemplar

I'm baffled as to how things got broken so badly at what was, by all reports and by personal experience, a good quaility company.

Bean counters, I suppose.

_________________

1 I actually had to check on line to confirm that because the little nameplate has long since fallen off, as have the little rubber feet on its bottom.

2 The plastic plate covering the hinge seems to break on me for reasons I can't explain. I've had Dells and Acers used in similar applications and never has a problem.

I have a HP 16C too and it still works as well as the day it was bought which was some time around 1977/1978. Like you I don't get much use out of it anymore but it is without a doubt the best engineered calculator I ever bought. My last scientific TI calculator lasted less than a year, the keys stopped working which made getting results difficult.

Really far from the worst waiting times I've experienced. I do wonder if others have set up a longer minimum wait time.

I mean, does it matter if they are actually busy or not? If you have to wait 15 minutes because all the phones are busy, is that really any different to a MINIMUM wait time of 15 minutes?

Yes, yes it fucking is.

FFS.

Obviously.

The drones that have to deal with customers are on the bottom rung of the ladder.

Those making decisions have cushy offices on the upper floor with a nice view.

Not

Talk about shooting yourself in the foot (and to use a Trump termp) BIGLY.

If I was looking for a PC and found out about that then guess who goes on my 'Do Not Buy' List right at the top?

Yep HP.

... but I don't need any further reasons to avoid HP like the plague. I think things like a printer telling me that it doesn't approve of where I purchase my ink from and therefor self-destructs are a clear enough message about what they think about their customers.

What atrocious customer service. HP are lying by attributing this forced 15 minute wait to "call volumes".

It's understandable to want to drive efficiency, it makes business sense. I like talking to people in general, but I would prefer to quickly resolve issues myself and avoid poorly trained, poorly motivated staff who possibly struggle to communicate effectively in English.

A properly trained and effective AI - sad to say it'd be preferable.

A decent knowledge base on their website - preferable again.

But crappy AI chatbot, crappy knowledge base and crappy human support once you get through is real reason to avoid HP and other foolish companies also doing it.

Happy customers = repeat business.

"Happy customers = repeat business"

repeat business != new lead conversion

new lead conversion = sales bonus

new lead conversion = growth in customer database = reporting business growth = Management bonus

happy customer != short term personal benefit from bonuses

I hate all of 'em, but I reserve my Special Hatred® for the ones that just give up and go back to the beginning of their script, if you keep selecting the "No that doesn't even remotely answer my question" option, around and around in a loop, forever.

One company that we deal with in particular, seemingly has no contact options of any kind, other than a moronic chatbot, which of course has so few response options that it's clearly just a token gesture, never intended to be actually used, just so they can tick the "Extensive customer support" checkbox in the marketing literature.

So I suppose it's only fitting, then, that everyone here uses a marketing contact at the aforementioned company, who exposed his email address to us unintentionally, as their first as only point of contact with them.

And every time we email him for any reason unrelated to marketing (which is basically every email), he politely agrees to help us, but reminds us that he is not the correct contact for e.g. tech support. And every time, we thank him, but politely point out that his company doesn't actually have any support contacts.

We do this partly in the vain hope that he might actually retort with an actual contract address. But of course, he never does.

Ah, you are taking about o2 / Telefonica? Or the train company (where are the booking conditions? Am I allowed to take this train since mine is delayed? What are the rules?) Construct a good website where I can find the relevant information. And no, having a "Forum" where "experts" "answer" questions is not helpful (hi , Microsoft).

Yeah, those chat bots are actually less than helpful. They are a stupid waste of time and resources. I feel the bile rising, I think I could spit lacework into steel plates.

I would add Veronica, the RealVNC Virtual Assistant to a Chatbot from Hell list.

"everyone here uses a marketing contact at the aforementioned company, who exposed his email address to us unintentionally, as their first as only point of contact with them."

Perhaps the marketing chap is the only human (stretching a point perhaps) in the company the rest being transdimensional brain sucking aliens with whom any communication invariably results semiliquid brain leaking from ones ears, eyes and nostrils.

Unsurprisingly actually sounds like most large organisations today. When did the Vogons take over Earth? Presumably hired by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. Just wait for the poetry....