About a month ago our printer broke. The power light and the color copy button just kept blinking and it wouldn’t let me print or copy. My brother, who is great with computers and works tech support, was here so he tried to give me a hand. He was stumped so he helped me go online to seek support from the HP website.
We were pleased to discover that they have an online chat feature. I know some about computers and my brother was there so I was sure we could effectively communicate the problem. We launched in with high hopes. As the conversation continued we started to get confused. We kept getting responses like:
“Thank you for that information.â€
“I appreciate your help.â€
These may not seem that strange, but they were slightly akward in the conversation. I wish I had saved it so I could share it with you here. Both my brother and I were a little confused and discussed different possibilties: we were talking to a computer, it was an automated system, it was a real person but they had some automated responses so they didn’t have to type so much…
The tech eventually diagnosed it as a hardware problem and told me that since it was in waranty we could have it replaced for free. They would send me a brand new refurbished printer. I had to talk with someone on the phone to confirm the information. A few minutes later someone called me…we had a very interesting conversation where he mispronounced everything and I spelled everything to make sure he got it right. It was obvious that English was not his first language.
Our printer arrived a few days later and we promptly sent the old one back. We have had the new one a few weeks, but haven’t used it much. Today I started printing stuff out for some job applications. I printed something, detached the laptop, walked into the other room, remembered I needed to print something else and walked back. The “on†button was blinking, rapidly, in a way I have never seen it do before. I worked with it for a little while until I was so frustrated I wanted to throw it across the room!
Later I decided to try the online chat thing again. I gave as much information as possible and explained what I had already tried to fix the problem.
“Thank you for your effortâ€
“I appreciate the informationâ€
Then he proceeded to tell me to try all the things I had already done! At one point he said,
“I appreciate what you have doneâ€
And I waited for him to tell me what to try next. Five minutes later I sent back the nice message
“And I appreciate that you are busy, but it is very frustrating to get automated responses and then wait for more than five minutes to get some real help.â€
Eventually, he once again diagnosed it as a hardware failure and told me he would replace it. No, not again! I didn’t really feel like “he†had properly understood the problem and therefore couldn’t properly diagnose it.
We researched the possibility of taking it in to get looked at, but everywhere we called said they would just have to send it off. SO, I finally gave in, but this time I CALLED HP so I could talk to someone and make sure they really understood. Once again the person I talked was not a native English speaker. However, he was really good. He was very patient with me and I tried to be just as patient with him. I explained everything that we had already tried, and he proceeded to ask me to try everything again! I humored him. We did it all again and in the end he was sure it was a hardware problem.
I promise you guys I was very patient. I wanted to scream and jump up and down. How could I have to have my printer replace twice in the course of a month! But I tried to contain my anger because I knew it wasn’t this guys fault. Eventually he put me on with his supervisor, who was also very nice. Ultimately it was decided that the printer had to be replaced. So, here we go again…