Alright ENOUGH Politics...Here's an HP story which should bring any techs mood down..

[TripleRLtd]

Situation:
A customer of mine has his sister call me with a Hewlett Crapard problem.
Problem:
Tech support (extended warranty) won't help her!
Pavillion 510n/XP hidden recovery partition won't recover.
They require her to use a boot disk to FDISK the drive after hours on the phone!!!
I ask her has anyone thought about the hard drive itself?
No.
So, I arrive and find out this is one year old and third replacement of bad HP's from the local Best Buy.
I listen to it boot, the bios recognizes it, then I run the Maxtor drive diag.
It passes the quick test, but fails the recertify test.
I stay long enough to talk to the warranty people who say that they don't recognize hard drive diag utilities!!! and say if bios sees it and fdisk partitons it, then they are not responsible!!!!!
While FDisk takes forever to verify drive, and format takes hours (I left before all this) they insist the lady only needs to purchase the restore CD from HP because the drive is good!!!!
I was soooo angry, I only charged the lady $20 because I felt sorry for her.
What do you all think?
(Should this have gone into TechTales?)

[NooNoo]

I think you should escalate it untill you find someone who knows what the inside of a computer looks like at hp....

[TripleRLtd]

I think you should escalate it untill you find someone who knows what the inside of a computer looks like at hp....

I'd use the big grin, but I am still so mad about this.
This is actually a warranty/service company that services all the big makes and all the big stores.
If I was personally involved with this I would do just that.
But I will suggest that to the lady.
I simply don't have the time.
They don't recognize the hard drive manufacturers diag tool?????
What a cop out!!!!
Consumers continue to pay and pay, even with extended warranty service!!
On second thought, I may just do that myself, call HP that is.

[Ya_know]

Yeah, sounds like you have gotten only idiots on the phone, there should be some one there with enough sense to look away from the script long enough to realize that your steps draw a more comprehensive conclusion then theirs, also being that you are at the PC, and they are over the phone...

[TripleRLtd]

Yeah, sounds like you have gotten only idiots on the phone, there should be some one there with enough sense to look away from the script long enough to realize that your steps draw a more comprehensive conclusion then theirs, also being that you are at the PC, and they are over the phone...

RIGHT!
When I was on the phone with him, I asked:
"Have you ever done this yourself?"
He said yeah, hundreds of times.
I should have asked him if he meant read the script hundreds of times.
Seems they must be paying these customer service talking heads a lot more than minimum wage nowadays.
No disrespect intended to the ones we have here at Windrivers, but reading a script is NOT doing it yourself.

[Shard92]

first thank you for the title.......


Second I'd Yell and scream and jump up and down and finally threaten to call the better business bureau if something wasn't done. But that's me.

[pinhead]

One thing that you can try is sending the drive back to the Maxtor. Call them and see if they will honor the warranty on the drive. I know this doesn't work with the newer Dells, but it's worth a try.

Cheers

[arch0nmyc0n]

I had something similar happen to me with Mcafee... some lady bought the online virus scanner thingy and tried to install it cause her old one had just gone out of date a week before. But she had the swen virus and it caused the computer not to run anything properly so the install program didn't work. She had talked to mcafee but they couldn't help her... so I got the machine and removed the virus and contacted mcafee to have them help me reinstall the product she had bought with a credit card online... I called EIGHT TIMES and not ONE of them could help me... I talked to 3 different supervisors... they all gave me bogus "help" that obviously was retarded.. they told me to go to digitalriver.com and get it from there... and the online help was dumb:
How to install or reinstall without paying again:
step #1: download the program
step#2: install and follow instructions
check it out
http://ts.mcafeehelp.com/default.asp...ution=1024x768

it doesn't help when there is no place for me to download the program... so I do the online chat thing with two different people and they tell me to email customer support... and I get the email back telling me the same thing the first 3 people on the phone told me... and I explained the full situation and they said they couldn't help me... three different areas of "support" and 15 different people couldn't help me... they got her money but didn't give her a product... so needless to say I will NEVER deal with mcafee again...

and this was just the straw that broke the camels back... I got other mcafee stories that would make most techs avoid them...

anyways I'm done my venting...

[Diver01]

I got a call from a friend of mine a few nights ago wondering how much an External Drive costs and which one he should get. When I asked him why he says...

Him: Remember that SVCHOST.EXE program you told me was taking to many resources?

Me: Yeah what about it?

Him: The guy from Dell Support told me it was an AOL program and the only way to fix it was to format the HD.

Me: That stupid &#*&@ moronic Mother *##@)( lying retard A$$ hole doesnt know what the (*$# hes talking about!!

Him: Well the guy that showed up to fix the CDRom told me that he didnt know what it was for.

I just dont get it...

[dddwarp]

Try fibbing :butt: I do not normally recoomend that, but sometimes you just have to break through this bull. I had a simular problem with ram. It would pass the post but the customer would get blue screens all the time. I used a tester and it failed in an overnight burn-in test. I explained it to Compaq but no go. I called back latter and told them it failed post. They sent new ram.

Another tip is to have the customer call upper level tech support. Do not even talk to lower level. Say you need to talk to "level 2" or management. I had an issue with with Compaq and a server. The tape drive would not work after a time and you had to reboot the server. Customer did not like that. I called Compaq and ran their built-in utilities but everything passed. I checked everything but it still would not work. Finally I got a service report that describes a certain mb chip will not work with the tape drive. I called up Compaq to describe it to them and how we need to replace the tape drive. No go, to late, past 30 days. I told them it was their build, I called before the 30days and "ya da, ya da". They would not budge. I had to esculate to management and say you will loose a customer. They sent a new tape drive. Just have the customer keep plugging away and thanks for this forum so I could vent.

[CeeBee]

Had some issues with a Sony DVD writer (writes were failing, had reading issues, cleaning did not help, problem was persistent on 3 different systems). Obviously I called tech support for an RMA. I was asked to run their test and obviously it showed a big "FAILED" result. After emailing them the test log (in which it did show failed operations) I got a reply that my drive has passed all the tests!!! Had to escalate for more than 1 week (obviously with no luck) until I decided to tell them that the BIOS did no longer see the drive. Got the RMA within minutes...
------------------
We have looked at the rma zip file results, unfortunetly there are no issues with the drive. All three drive test have passed. Make sure you are using supported media that is high speed and make sure you get the latest version of firmware for the drive. Thanks.
Thank you for contacting Sony Tech. Support. Fill free to visit our website, www.sony.storagesupport.com or you can call in for support at 800-588-3847. Thanks
----- Original Message -----
From: ######
To: ######
Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2003 6:11 PM
Subject: Attn: ##### - this one has the attachment...

Hello,
I am attaching the latest rma.zip file generated. I am also attaching for refference 2 screenshots taken after the test. Please note that I have also tested the drive today on a different machine with the same failures. (fresh Win2000 SP3, only Veritas RecordNow installed without the packet writing software).

[techs]

It's times like these that pose a moral dilemma. If you lied and said the machine would not recognize the drive they would just cross ship you a drive and every thing would be ok. Got it?

[Gabriel]

I have to say this
eversince HP teamed up with Compaq they became crap. A simple as that.
I remember a time when HP was Reliable and Trustworthy tech support.
Today I rely on Dell. HP stayed only for printers (which the Crapy compaq has nothing to do with).
Compaq = BAD.


Above all I would record thee tech support person on a tape - and start a law suit. they will be sorry for thei a$$es afterwards.

Cheers,
Gabriel

[bladeburn]

It indeed is a very sad thing, but again they are huge you can't do any thing really about it. I have so many problems like these due to the nature of this matter I just can't disclose where. But here is what I conclude, it all depends who you get. These days sad thing is that most of the phone calls you are making to tech support are going to "india" Hello wtf. Why can't we speak to some one in US? Their argument is that cost can be kept down this way, well
f--- that what about quality of service???
I have seen so many problems with HP desktops and their service that it scary. Since compaq is part of HP its the same, look at their fans on the heat sink, they are cheap as dirt. After running computer for about an hour or two when you touch the heat sink its hot as hell.
Any ways I have one too, one day I get a call from a woman almost crying about her laptop, she told me that she called Toshiba about her laptop and they said even though her laptop is still under their warranty (less than an year old) they can't do any thing. Before this they spent two hours trying to fix her problem and at the end they told her that her laptop is defective and Toshiba won't replace it. Person she spoke with was very rude with her and hung up on her now thats f----- up. So I felt bad for her and asked what the problem is and guess what it was, "hibernation" feature was enabled and all the power management features were enabled so after few min of inactivity her screen would go blank, it took me five min to solve her problem that Toshiba's so called wanna be tech's couldn't do it in like two hours. What a shame.

Oh also about their in built diagnostic utilities that hp has, here is a good one, customer told me her hard drive is bad, so I ran the test that hp provided and it came up fine, but guess what that poor hard drive was "clicking" lol.


Cheers every one