Here’s a perfect example of why support staff need to receive exhaustive training before they are permitted to represent a company. In trying to avoid covering under-warranty repairs for a laptop, a HP staffer claims that Amazon “probably” sold her counterfeit HP equipment.
‘I said “There is no way that my laptop is not a brand new. It’s HP Sealed and sold by Amazon.com. Are you telling me the HP seal is a fake one too?” He said “Probably.” I asked, “With my laptop serial number, does my laptop match every specification on your HP database?” He said “Yes.” I said, “That’s what HP built and sold to me. As a customer/consumer, who will take their laptop apart and check if there’s a serial number on the motherboard before they buy?” He argued, “But HP will not ship anything without a serial number.”‘
Underneath it all is a less ridiculous but far more evil claim, repeated several times–according to the customer–by HP’s myriad organs: that its warranty does not actually cover what HP manufactures, only the software it installs on it.
On the other hand, if Amazon really is selling fake HP gear, that’s just super.
HP Denies Your Warranty, Accuses Amazon Of Selling You A “Fake” Laptop [Consumerist]
There’s no link there! Please fix.
Pleae note that the link in this article does not work due to a the HTML “HREF” tag begin typed as “HREAF”.
Actual link is:
http://consumerist.com/5008114/hp-denies-your-warranty-accuses-amazon-of-selling-you-a-fake-laptop
As a college kid, I did support for HP.
I watched the last of the /real/ customer service be run off by metrics.
It’s not cost-effective* to hire anyone other than American high-school drop-outs and people who do not share the same language as the customer.
*cost-effective to someone’s 6-month vacation replete with first-class accommodations.
Thanks for spotting the HTML error, Harrkev. It’s fixed now.
It’s not fixed; it’s still “hreaf”, it should be “href”.
If you buy an HP laptop, you’re just asking for trouble. My data points are rather skewed since I did IT work for several years, but every person I’ve known with an HP laptop has had catastrophic hardware issues.
Really though, HP doesn’t need good tech support – warranties on their computers only last for about 30 days anyway.
I had the same problem with Sony Ericsson after buying a car kit off eBay.
Sony claimed that the antenna cable supplied in the genuine car kit was a forgery.
Why anyone would bother to place a fake antenna cable in a genuine car kit is beyond my comprehension, but Sony resolutely refused to replace the part.
It seems to be quite the scam.
I wrote about it all here: http://digital-diatribe.com/?p=32