HP ditches 15-minute wait time policy due to 'feedback' HP Inc today abruptly ditched the mandatory 15-minute wait time that it imposed on customers dialling up its telephone-based support team due to "initial feedback." As The Register exclusively revealed yesterday, HP introduced the minimum time that PC and print users would need to wait before they spoke to a human being. This …
May I translate:
"We're always looking for ways to improve our customer service experience."
Some bright bulb in marketing with a philosophy degree decided to push the idea and no one said no because their father is a senior exec.
"This support offering was intended to provide more digital options with the goal of reducing time to resolve inquiries."
It's cheaper to push a web site and we didn't want to pay more for people to actually talk to our customers.
"We have found that many of our customers were not aware of the digital support options we provide."
We hate dealing with the whining babies who call complaining of our lack of testing, development review and underfunded R&D resulting in flawed and insecure product being shipped.
"Based on initial feedback, we know the importance of speaking to live customer service agents in a timely fashion is paramount."
Due to multiple threats of cancelled contracts and customers leaving to go elsewhere, we saw our bottom line being threatened.
"As a result, we will continue to prioritize timely access to live phone support to ensure we are delivering an exceptional customer experience."
We f*cked up badly, but we'll never admit it publicly.
This post has been deleted by its author
Those at HP thought this policy wouldn't become public knowledge and that there wouldn't be a big negative backlash really are incompetent.
Catbert (the evil HR director) would have got this right.
Clearly this policy is to make phoning so unpleasant that customers will take other options. Such as giving up, and hoping the problem will go away on its own. Once it's worked, you can then make 50% of your call centre staff redundent.
But this way makes you look evil, when you inevitably get caught.
Correct procedure is to have a hiring freeze, staff turnover in call centres is pretty high. Staff numbers will drop rapidly and naturally, causing wait times to rise and saving all the embarrassment of getting caught.
If natural wasteage isn't fast enough, you could always try poisoning the offce coffee...
So people are generally phoning up after likely exhausting their family support techs and because the web site er sorry, digital channels have not solved their problem. Likewise a scan of Stack overflow, Reddit et al has proved fruitless. The chat bot thing has also drawn a blank (could have told you that anyway).
Then to add 15 mins to call wait sounds like that famous scene from The IT Crowd with Chis O’Dowd not picking up the ringing phone.. Except the caller will make coffee, play with the cat/dog or do other stuff and ask Siri or Alexa to remind them when 15 minutes is up and they need to pay attention again.
Viewing his cartoons (without an adblocker) is directly supporting him though since those ads pay him.
Heck, even viewing his cartoons with an adblocker gives supports him to a degree (site visitor numbers taken from the backend which he could use to prove traffic numbers for affiliate deals etc.)
And yes, it's true that the Dilbert site no longer has the strip on it. I think you need to give him money on Patreon or similar to access them.
Mediocre But Arrogant
This has big MBA energy all over it... someone created a spreadsheet that showed how many people will end a support call in queue and go on to other self-help resources in the first 15 minutes and calculated how much money they would save by not having to answer those calls.
Because fuck you customer - go fix it yourself.
Let's run that response through my Natural Intelligence platform...and we get..
"We made a dick move in how we manage inbound call queues and got found out, so we have had to back pedal and put out this statement in an attempt to convince you it was all part of a coherent plan and we know what we're are doing. ".
"and we'll quietly reintroduce ..."
Of course not. That'd be dumb. Do you think all big tech managers are idiots? What they'll do is introduce a random delay with average delay of 15 minutes. Or they'll introduce a ficticious queue counter that will inform the caller every two minutes that their call is very important to HP and they are now 171 from the top of the queue. Then slowly count it down. Or they'll just turn the whole support thing over to AI agents that make Clippy look helpful by comparison.
What do you think is more likely?
- HP reverse the change, tell you actual wait times and staff their call centers to minimise those wait times. Oh, and improve the "digital" options.
- HP double-down on their lies, by telling you it's a "real" wait rather than an artificially induced one?
"What do you think is more likely?
- HP reverse the change, tell you actual wait times and staff their call centers to minimise those wait times. Oh, and improve the "digital" options.
- HP double-down on their lies, by telling you it's a "real" wait rather than an artificially induced one?”
Oh wait, wait, I’m fairly sure I know the answer to that one......
My natural intelligence platform parses everything in that statement from HP as true from their point of view and false from everyone else's.
A customer service experience is better if it's cheaper and optimal if its implementation costs nothing.
Interposing a non-functioning chatbot between their non-functioning online advice and the long-suffering humans in the call centre is adding an option - albeit a useless one.
An enquiry is resolved if the customer can't be arsed to persist in the obstacle courses needed to overcome it.
The customers not aware of the digital support options are the ones who haven't abandoned them in frustration.
From then on, it deteriorates into an exercise in denying they did what they did because it clearly makes them look shitty.
It's ok if HP have a non-functioning anything for me. Because my wallet is non-functioning if the name of HP is mentioned. I mention this frequently to family and friends, they take notice.
This, in the long list of shenanigans have really shown me that they don't want me as a customer unless I pay the HP-tax. Month after month. Of course, ideally (from HP's perspective) without anything to show for it.
Mine beat feet away from HP when their new models of printers suddenly had a 5 times higher TOC than the ones they replaced (workgroup and departmental printers)
They were already pricier than everything else and lower quality than most, but documenting the change allowed me to overrule manglement who had an attitude of "nobody ever got fired for buying HP"
As an Instant Ink subscriber, I can confirm that they absolutely do not support regular email. Only telephone or WhatsApp, and you only get given contact details after going through a lengthy automated "try this then try this" thing, which really needs to have a skip option if you've already done that only to get to the end to be given no contact details because there's nobody available at the time you tried and the bot won't even stick your request into a queue to contact early.
And when you do contact, even with some sort of referral number, they ask all of your contact and printer details not for "security" but because they simply don't appear to be able to look up customer information themselves.
And all of that because their overly aggressive DRM decided that, nope, this nearly new black ink is simply not going to work ever again. Either that or their manufacturing quality has fallen off a cliff.
They're okay about replacements, but what a bloody palaver getting there. The printer says "Cartridge error", the website says "Cartridge error", if the cartridge has failed and reinserting it twice (assuming one rubs the contacts the second time) doesn't sort it, then the printer ought to spit out a page saying that a replacement has been ordered automatically and in the meantime the printer will work in single cartridge mode. But, no, that would be too much like being useful...
It is difficult to think of a move more likely to antagonise their customers than forcing a 15 minute wait for 'help'.
I once tried to assemble an Ikea* flatpack chest of drawers. It simply did not fit together, and there were too few runners for the drawers. I got very frustrated and eventually drove all the way back to the Ikea store for a refund. I decided that I would accept a replacement, provided they assembled it first. The returns department in Ikea is a soul destroying place. The staff do not make eye contact with the angry customers, just refund your money without question, poor chaps.
Now just imagine being on the receiving end of an angry customer who knows he/she has been made to wait for 15 minutes for no valid reason. Merely for the sanity of their own call centre staff this had to stop. I heard story that the HMRC** telephone line voice recognition software was allowed to accept "I just want to pay my fucking taxes" as the reason for a call as so many 'customers' were seriously angry at the long wait for a response.
Pissed off icon, obvs.
*Other self-assembly furniture vendors are available, I believe, and this was some time last century, so they may have improved by now, and my experience may not be typical. Do not generalise form a single example.
**His Majesty's Revenue and Customs, responsible for income and other national tax collection in the UK. Local authorities collect local taxes.
Eclectic Man,
I've not seen a piece of flat-pack furniture with a missing piece since the 1990s (when it was incredibly common). I think the parts are picked electronically now - so there are far fewer errors.
I built a wheelie kitchen mini-table / worktop thing for Mum last year - which had all the pieces but one of the screw-holes was missing and had to be drilled. But that seems to be the worst problem you get nowadays.
A story I believe was in Mark McCormack's book 'What they Don't Teach you at Harvard Business School'*:
Mayor of a US city was to open a new major bridge by installing the final, gold rivet in the structure, then declaring it open. Now, obviously the bridge was structurally sound before the opening ceremony, and perfectly functional. Come the event, the mayor is presented with the golden rivet and gun.
No hole.
Mayor palms the rivet, declares the bridge open. Much applause.
Later Mayor asks what happened?
According to the contractor "There was a hole in that when it left the factory."
[I think the Register needs to have a survey to determine where all these missing holes have gone.]
* A rather interesting read from someone who actually ran a successful business
I believe the manufacturer of Polo mints used to steal any spare holes they could find. There was the great hole shortage of '97 where they didn't have enough in stock, so ever after they had bands of hole snatchers taking them to a large warehouse in Luton. Hence why Luton is known as the biggest hole in the UK.
I think Cumbernauld and Dundee would both like to contest that claim.... Cumbernauld apparently being designed by surrealists suffering a psychotic episode mid way though a 3 week meth bender....
Dundee is just where hopes and dreams go to die, it has some bright points but even they are stained with the stench of surrounding failure
We all do. We're deuterostomial enteroceleomates. It's fun to understand which hole came first.
I was helping a colleague install an ATM and there was no hole for the mains cable to go through so we requisitioned one from stores The stores clerk phoned the order in before he realised what he was ordering. Stores staff know a lot of rude words and don't have a sense of humour.
I imagine they figured out it shows goodwill, better and cheaper to supply a spare than have customers calling support with a sheepish "dropped it on the floor", having to explain why it is so costly to ship a single screw, and the hassle of handling the admin of that transaction.
It is a godsend when you do drop one and have no idea where it catapulted itself to. And an appreciated addition to the 'spare screw' box otherwise.
Some time ago I started to assemble two Ikea desks for my grandchildren. Both of them had the same component severely mangled. It appeared that one set of holes had been drilled and then the component turned round before drilling the second lot so that it could be fitted with either set of holes correctly placed but not both. You got away lightly with one missing hole.
That was definitely much later than the nineties.
Chinese flatpack vendors get around that often by giving you several extra screws and the most recent piece of tat my wife bought (someone shoot me please) had a note in the manual - we have given you extra spare screws in case of problems
So obviously they realised it was a point of contention.
I'll give Chinese companies something.....they exist in highly competitive markets so to get ahead they have to respond to customer feedback and iterate to improve (well above the bottom end that is) - I bought something and the complaint was something trivial online and mentioned a couple of months before, manual hadn't been updated but the item itself had been changed to resolve the online complaints - imagine that coming from HP/dell?
It is difficult to think of a move more likely to antagonise their customers than forcing a 15 minute wait for 'help'.
The answer to that challenge is of course: letting their long suffering customers† know this.
† one would like to think ex-customers but there are a surprisingly large number of masochists.
>The returns department in Ikea is a soul destroying place. The staff do not make eye contact with the angry customers, just refund your money without question, poor chaps.
Funny story. I once bought a flatpack shelf at Ikea. While assembling it, part of the wood just outright crumbled to bits while I was driving a screw into it. This was a fairly large shelf, and the problem occurred after I had already fixed the larger bits.
I drove back to the store and went to customer service. The CS guy initially blamed me for incorrect assembly when I described the problem. But I had actually brought the entire shelf with me, thanks to a friend loaning me his van. I brought it to the CS desk, and from there to the store's workshop. The CS guy timidly tried to tell to the workshop guys that they couldn't replace it for free because it was an assembly mistake.
The workshop guy replied, right in front of me and my friend: "Don't be ridiculous. Replace it. We all know the quality we sell here."
They couldn't give me just the part, so they took back the shelf and gave me a whole new one. I left with a significantly better opinion of the store (though not of that specific CS guy). I mean, come on, it's a shelf that costs ten to twenty times less than what I would buy at a traditional furniture store. I know perfectly well what I'm buying, you know perfectly well what you're selling, and I've already agreed to it. You really don't need to lie to me.
A week later, I was back in the store to get a few more things, and they had my shelf, the original one, fully assembled with a somewhat unsightly mess of screws holding up the crumbly bit, for sale at one quarter of the price.
Not sure why so many complain about IKEA.
Just get the Family card and your sorted. Best customer service I've come across (I once broke a cupboard because I was an idiot and tried to skip a step).
https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/customer-service/knowledge/articles/df104e78-fcdf-4570-b637-bdbbg5883cbe.html
I suppose now things can be ordered online things are different but the physical stores are so bad that I consider them an elaborate experiment in customer abuse. (HP and Microsoft are latecomers by comparison). Getting in and out of the car park at the Leeds store was bad enough. The inadequate number of loading bays was just more of the same. There was also a notice that trolleys were not to be taken up to the top car park floor. Without that notice I would have taken my trolley up and returned it so I did the only reasonable thing in response: I took the trolley up there and left it.
I will not buy from Ikea again.
The Leeds store carpark is a total disaster, but that's not really Ikea's fault.
I've found their customer service to be excellent - they'll take back unused items without quibbling, and have always sent out replacement screws and larger parts without any issue.
They even happily send out replacement screws with no proof of purchase whatsoever, which was a lifesaver last time I moved home and lost all the screws for a bedframe.
Customer service starts from the moment you go there* and if it's a nightmare to get in, a nightmare to get round the store to find what you want, a nightmare to queue to pay, a nightmare to get your purchases to your car and a final one to leave it doesn't matter how good they are at taking back goods are providing replacement parts: they've already failed at customer service multiple times by making the initial purchase a thoroughly unpleasant experience and not one to be repeated to sample the excellent aftersales service.
It may well be that things have improved beyond recognition but once one becomes an ex-customer because of past experience how does one get to discover that?
* Something businesses forget when they site their premises on car parks operated by parking vultures.
The turning point for me was when I, as an Authorised HP Dealer, received as part of our Demo allocation, an A3 ink-jet printer at a steeply discounted price. The PSU on it went ker-phut within a few days. HP just shrugged their shoulders* and the distributor threatened (but did not proceed with) court action. This was in IIRC Fiorina's time.
*ISTR HP telling me I had no rights to return it. ISTR my response was "do you want me to demonstrate it in its current [non] operating condition?" I can't remember how we disposed of it in the end.
I had similar with one company, literally sizzling with frustration. When I heard "estimated wait time is 45 minutes" I responded with "wtff, you have got to be fucking kidding me, for fucks sake, I am going to chew the balls off whatever fucking dip shit came up with that stupid fucking idea, just fucking put me through to someone", 10 seconds later "welcome to <cust support> <fake name> speaking how can I help you".
So I had more than a sneaking suspicion that someone had built profanity detection / voice stress analysis into their IVR systems
(Just a shame royal fail and parcel farce don't have the same.....their IVR has been on the sharp end of my tongue more than a few times)
My niece worked at IKEA on telephone customer support. She would often get people calling for advice on putting the things together. She has never touched a screwdriver in her life and would simply give them access to subcontractor they could pay to do the job for them.
Yes, but that's been the case for years now. Everybody here knows it, and nobody in the know buys HP junk.
But that doesn't matter to HP as their target buyers are in small part clueless retail consumers, and mainly enterprise procurement departments who have to buy either the cheapest upfront regardless of how they'll get reamed through corporate changes, or have to buy whatever the relevant director tells them to after a slap up lunch and a round of golf with HP's sales team.
By a strange coincidence, 27 years ago happens to be the last time I bought an HP printer. It was a LaserJet 5L and cost $500 back then. A complete steaming pile of shit. The gravity fed tray didn't work properly and it jammed all of the time. I literally couldn't print anything with it. I guess the LasterJet 5L was the beginning of HP's enshitification.
PHB will not pay in monetary terms, but I've seen 3rd level managers in HP (probably about 100 heads under them) being moved to a PM role for "highly strategic projects" with total headcount of 2.
Not sure if the genius who pulled out this idea out of his ass will get the same treatment (and we know the next PHB's idea will be just as bad) but it warms my heart a little knowing that, AFAIK, some get a kick in the butt, at least politically
Mythbusters have actually made a lead ballon and it flew.
I have used the HP digital support system. And after 20 mins, it gave me a telephone number and told me to ring it.
First thing on ringing the number? A message asking why don't I try the digital support options..
Was using Stansted airport's parking website recently: the info that I required was not available there so I tried the helpline. I tried several paths through the IVR and all ended in a message telling me to use the website and then terminating the call.
That Corporate Manglement would realise that you don't _have_ to act like total c*nts to be successful.
And if you find yourself doing something where you think "huh, it would be shitty to be on the receiving end of that" then you can decide to not do it.
Basically, can we just agree to ban narcissistic psychopaths from any kind of position of power please?
So are they now mandatorily keeping the wait time under 15 minutes to prove that they are not sneakily implementing this policy anyway or...Oh, wait...There's no way we can check, can we ?
Now, would there be some government watchdog to investigate them and sue them for the public's time wasted, by the man-hour...Oh, wait...Where's my nuclear waste again...
15mins? thats nothing.
My work has a lot of printers made by (H)opeless (P)roducts. You phone 'tech support', wait 30mins and someone on the other end literally yells stuff like Fuck Off or just laughs but then hangs up anyway. They've sworn at tech staff, execs and once someone that was only one level below a cabinet minister. They literally don't care.
So we had to minimize the contract, cancel ALL new printers (about 40 of them) and are just waiting for the contract to die mid-april.
unfortunately the contract will be written in such a way that they could take a shotgun to their machines, divert their phones to the talking clock and still fulfill their "contract obligations".
With less than a month to go on the contact you are better waiting it out, taking all the schmoozing their sales drones apply and still tell them to "Go F%ck off" at the end of the schmoozing.
Many years ago I had to phone the HP server support line where the on-hold music was panpipe renditions of popular hits.
After listening to the panpipe version of the monobrowed purveyor of ultimate filths "Lady in Red", the poor support tech who eventually answered got an earful from me.
I can't quickly find HP's UK support numbers, which probably shouldn't be a surprise, but the one that I did find was not a premium rate number, but a normal non-free 020 London number. From my understanding as a nonresident, that means that, while the customer would still pay for that call, HP wouldn't get any of that money and therefore have no financial incentive to keep them on the line.
I'm also curious how prevalent paying by minute is in the UK, as many countries I'm familiar with have seen a significant decline in this except for premium-rate numbers, which aren't much used by reputable businesses. Mobile phones nearly always have unlimited calling without caring about proximity, and even consumer land lines tend to offer this, although sometimes as one of a few options. Is it different there?
No better way to celebrate than playing this out loud...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWhkbDMISl8
...especially if you've not seen this recently - it's been remastered in HD
Back in the late 70s, I worked in the PO (BT for you young'uns) Tower and there was some kind of fault between there and the Irish Republic. The routine was for the first person in Mon morning would place a call and the last person out on Fri night replaced the receiver...
I worked there for a couple of months as part of my apprenticeship and the routine was going before I arrived and continued after I moved on...
Tech support doesn’t know anything anyway. You have to go to online forums to find out anything. My biggest problem with HP and nVidia was how to defeat their proprietary software locks, and after that, how to defeat their endless email spam trying to force me to buy their useless, worthless services.
I upgraded to a Supermicro.
(Then I put all my server tasks on a Datto NAS, which does everything within TDP=15 watts!! Woot!)
“HP, who? What, aren’t they out of business by now?”
Given we now know how effectively the management, involved in this shambles, have managed the HP brand reputation I think there's a very straightforward cost cutting measure that HP can implement.
No need to retain their services, and I don't envisage they'd be any use answering customer queries, so sadly.........
An alternative is that Epson, Canon, Xerox and a few others might be happy to contribute to paying for them to remain with HP. Why advertise your own brand when HP's management can drive customers to you ?
Jesus. The only times I've had to ring HP are because I've exhausted everything else, have made myself comfy, been to toilet and generally settled in for a 1-hour plus experience where my entire aim is to get past 1st line support to someone without a script. Adding a mandatory 15 minutes to that would see me just raining ProLiants down on to the street below.
This is a canonical example of enshittification. I can imagine the calls went something like this:
Customer: I've been waiting over 15 minutes.
CSR: I apologize for the wait. The dipshits in management thought it would be a good idea to make everyone wait 15 minutes or more on the phone,
Customer: That's the stupidest shit I've ever heard of.
CSR: Sounds about right for management.
Its all about Wall St. and nothing else these days. How dare consumers expect a Service they paid for. Merely giving HP/HPE all of your hard earned wonga should be privilege enough! Any big EVILL Corp (insert name of company here ____) are acting the same "lets all be like Elon 'cause he's great", now they have trounced their employees for more profits, they are intending to treat customers the same.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jan/22/watchdog-accuses-hmrc-of-deliberately-degrading-phone-services
The trouble with them is that I have absolutely no choice but to deal with them. And there's some things that you
must get them to sort out for you - you simply cannot do them online.
Customers "not being aware of the digital support options" is not the issue. Most of the time customers call because the digital support options didn't solve the problem.
By the time I directly call a manufacturer for help, I've already tried everything else.
… to allow us to cut out customer service staff.
A 15 minute delay is a “support offering”?
So they did enough “market research“ to discover that people didn’t use their online offerings, but didn’t do the same amount of market research to figure out a 15 minute delay was not the right method?
Now let's hope the 'feedback' from their pensioners gets them to do something about the Pensioner Experience...
Maybe HP has forgotten that customers are only one, admittedly very important, of many stakeholders.
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