Tech Support Sucks

I absolutely dread calling tech support for anything. Assuming you can get through to a halfway competent receptionist (I refuse to acknowledge them as techs), they have to follow their mind-melting script that makes you jump through an unending series of flaming hoops before they can acknowledge that your problem is well and truly beyond them and you need a new one.

Today I called tech support for an HP fax machine. 35 days from purchase it insists it has a paper jam. Remove paper, it still thinks it’s jammed. There’s really not much to this fax, it’s like a small inkjet printer with a phone jammed into the front. I guaranteed my co-workers it would be replaced, it would just be a matter of convincing HP it has to be replaced.

Already feeling the cold sweat, I picked up the phone and dialed. It’s uncanny how accurate this Foamy cartoon is. The only problem is it’s about an hour too short (that is not an exaggeration) and I spoke to a woman.

The first hurdle was the automated answering system. “Press 2 for support” is a thing of the past: now you have to talk to the damn thing. Once it figured out I was talking about a fax machine, it kindly informed me I was out of warranty and should use the free, online tech support. Nice try, HP.

I don’t know who decided these would be a better solution than “press 1 for tech support,” but they ought to be shot.

I finally got a live person. And as usual, her server was running extremely slow, apparently causing the prompts in her script to appear several seconds apart. This, it would turn out, was a big part of why the call took so long. I would like to say here that this certainly does not give me any kind of confidence in the level of skill and service I would see were I to consider HP for a consulting role with my district. If they can’t keep their techs’ systems running properly, why the hell would I trust them with mine?

If you watch the Foamy video, you’ll notice the Indian support guru asks Foamy if he likes ice cream and about the weather. Instead I got “Are you calling from North America?” and then “How is the climate?” I was very tempted to say “temperate” but let it go. Finally she asked for the model number and serial number.

This became an ordeal in itself. Even reading it phonetically, she was inventing A’s and 5’s where there were none. She also decided to eliminate the V from my name twice.

Then came the flaming hoops. There are a whopping two solutions in the manual for resolving paper jams: look in the front and pull out the paper or look in the back and pull out the paper. Guess what my friendly receptionist told me to do? Look in the front and take out the paper and then look in the back and take out the paper.

Then I got “clean the rollers with a lint-free cloth.” Oh, sure I keep one of those in my pocket at all times in case I have to clean a fax roller. I told her I’d already taken an air duster to it and messed with the rollers, but she insisted. So I humored her and used my shirt, then slammed the top door open and closed a few times for effect.

Then came the one thing I was hoping she’d tell me: the top secret reset button sequence that is always there but rarely in the manual. But it still came with hoops that went something like this:

HER: “Okay, unplug your fax machine.”
ME: “Done.”
HER: *Several seconds of silence*
ME: “Now what?”
HER: “Did you unplug the fax machine?”
ME: “Yeah.”
HER: “Okay. Now we must wait 30 seconds.”
ME: *Tempted to hum the Jeopardy tune. Time passes. I lean through a door and spot a clock. Time ticks by.* “Um, I think it’s been 30 seconds.”
HER: “Yes. Now hold down the cancel and enter buttons simultaneously.”
ME: “Finally!” I plug it in, fire it up. Paper jam, it says. “It’s jammed.”
HER: “You must wait for it to warm up.”
ME: “Yeah, it’s done. It says paper jam.”
HER: “It should not have warmed up yet.”
ME: “It’s an inkjet fax, not a laser printer. It took all of five seconds, then decided it has a paper jam.”

I so love educating receptionists on their own products. She consults the little black book, returns.

“HP does not recommend repair on those units, so we will replace it for you.”

Well lah-dee-frickin’-dah! About time!

But wait! Now it’s sales pitch time. She wants to sell me replacement cartridges for my broken fax.

ME: “How about you send me a fax machine that works, first?”
HER: “Yes, but these are much cheaper. How much do you pay for cartridges?”
ME: “I don’t know, 20, maybe 25 bucks.”
HER: “Oh no, sir. You pay $34 to $36 for those. We will sell you them for $33 with free shipping, and you will have a two-year warranty.”
ME: *I punch up my Staples account.* “Says here I can get them for $26.”
HER: “Oh no, that is not correct. You pay $34 at least.”
ME: “No, I have a Staples account, and they will sell me an HP 20 cartridge for $25.99 with free overnight shipping.”
HER: “Yes, but these are the correct cartridges. How many would you like today?”

That’s the expedited version. After finally convincing her I would not be buying cartridges today, she went off to find a hardware technician. This took ten ten minutes of failed attempts. A hardware person finally picked up, and the hardware person started asking for the receptionist. This went on for some time.

ME: “How about that new fax?”
HARDWARE LADY: “Yes, I just need to speak with the technician. Technician, are you there?”
ME: “It must be break time.”

So then she asks me for the error message I’m receiving. The hairs on the back of my neck go up as I worry I’m going to be starting the process all over again. My mantra: “I will not snap. There are children on the other side of a paper-thin wall not ten feet away. I will not snap.”

She asks me five — yes, five, I counted them — times what the error message on the display is, then clarifies it three more times and gets it wrong each time. Then finally she gets it right. Then came my address, then confirmation of my address, then “am I sure that’s the correct address?” (Google Maps insists our street number doesn’t exist, so I’m not surprised), then confirmation of the same address twice more for the billing address. My email address got confirmed and re-confirmed. The credit card number (for collateral in case I don’t ship back the broken machine, ship back the machine smashed to bits, or ship it back with “EAT A DICK” written on it in Sharpie marker) got confirmed and re-confirmed. I even got asked about the climate again. That must be a popular question in India.

Then they said I’d get the new one on the 9th. Apparently it gets shipped from India, too. I offered to pay for faster, and they ended up eating the $20 for overnight shipping, the one positive part of the whole experience.

If I had to deal with this on a day-to-day basis, there’s no way I could do so without keeping my sanity. I’m still tempted to smash it to bits or write “EAT A DICK” across the face of the fax machine in big, bold, Sharpie lettering when I ship it back. It would almost be worth the hundred bucks it costs for the replacement.