Hewlett Packard - HP Will not honor technical support. Palo Alto California
I have a 2 year old HP 6310 all in one printer. I installed a new IMAC and wanted to use it with my printer. I connected it up and installed software but it would not print. It would only get stuck in the print queue.
The Apple support tech said to down load the latest HP drivers and if that did not work contact HP. I downloaded the drivers and of course it did not work. Then I contacted HP via their chat support line. After a long discussion they told me they could not support me and that I needed to contact their telephone support where they would give me the free support that I needed. I recorded the chat dialog below so you can see it for yourself:
"Brown: Hello Jerry.
Brown: Welcome to HP Total Care for All-in-One products. My name is Brown.How may I assist you today?
Jerry Hutcheson: Hello. I have a 6310 All in one, that I have had for about a year and I just installed my new MAC with OS 10.5.3 and the latest drivers downloaded from your website. But when I try to print. The document gets stuck in the print queue and says stopped, I have sucessfully printed a test page, and I have printed from my windows pc fine. It is connected via ethernet.
Brown: As per the information provided in the chat session, I understand that you are unable to print from the MAC computer. Am I correct?
Jerry Hutcheson: yes
Brown: Thank you for the confirmation.
Brown: Are you able to make a copy from the All-in-One?
Jerry Hutcheson: yes
Brown: As we are able to make a copy perfectly, it seems the All-in-One is working fine.
Brown: The issue seems to be with the software settings in the computer.
Brown: I wish I could help you with MAC.
Brown: Unfortunately, we are not trained on MAC environment to help you with the issue.
Brown: I am afraid, at present HP does not offer CHAT Support for this product in the Macintosh OS environment. However, you can avail full support in the Macintosh environment through our phone support teams. You can call them @ 800-HP-INVENT or 800-474-6836.
Brown: These service engineers are Macintosh OS specialists and would be able to help you over the phone. This is available 24/6 (except Sundays) and is a free service.
Jerry Hutcheson: ok
As you can see they offered a free service then when I called they wanted $34.95. Typical bait and switch. I tried to get the supervisor on the line but the tech refused. This is a terrible way to treat a loyal customer and they should not be allowed to get away with it. I am considering filing in small claims court.
Jerry
Oviedo, Florida
U.S.A.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Eddie
Youngstown,Ohio,
U.S.A.
Technical Support
#2UPDATE Employee
Thu, July 10, 2008
You are entitled to one year of HP TotalCare upon purchasing the product. Per the conversation you had posted it didn't appear that he asked for your S/N to verify your date of purchase yet. Instead, he stopped the conversation once he found out he wouldn't be able to assist you and directed you to someone in tech support that could instead of wasting your time. I'm sure what happened next is that once the complainant contacted phone technical support where they could properly assist him and narrowed down his particular machine, he had been past the one year of complimentary technical support included with his purchase. (there are discrepancies in the story - he says it's two years old but told the tech it was one year?) The technician then offered to continue troubleshooting for the above charge as is customary with any product that has come out of warranty.
No clue what you're filing the complaint about.