Reader's of our online forum speak out...
HP invents excusesto fob off customer
PAUL GALLAGHER, a student from Trinity College in Dublin contacted us after losing patience with Hewlett-Packard and its apparent inability to repair his broken laptop. He says he really needs the machine as he’s studying for his finals and compiling a report for his final year project. He was given the new computer as a gift in the middle of January but there were “issues” with it from day one - it constantly crashed and shut down without warning.
He contacted HP on January 20th and used its online technical support to troubleshoot the issues. He removed the internal ram (as instructed) and replaced it. He also reset the software and carried out a number of other tweaks that would probably have been beyond most of us.
“After numerous phone calls, they agreed to take the unit in to replace the hard drive,” he writes. They said they’d collect the laptop on Friday, February 12th. No-one showed up. He repeatedly called the company and was given various excuses for the no show before his computer was eventually collected on Wednesday, February 17th.
He was told it would take between seven and 10 days for the repair to be completed but a full month on and he is still waiting to get his laptop back.
Over the course of the last four weeks he has made contact with the company on a number of occasions and has been told that the computer is awaiting parts, that HP didn’t have the laptop anymore, that it has been repaired and is being tested, and a number of other seemingly contradictory stories.
So, his patience at an end, he contacted us last week and we contacted the company on his behalf. In response we received a statement in which HP claimed to listen “attentively to customers to truly understand their needs”. It sais it prided itself on the “quality of customer service and support it provides globally to ensure that complete customer satisfaction is delivered” and claimed to have “comprehensive systems and guidelines in place to ensure customer queries and issues are resolved in a satisfactory and timely manner”.
That is all well and good but the statement seemed to be completely at odds with our reader’s experience. HP went on to say that the laptop he had been given as a gift was intended for sale in North America and was not available through its retailers in Europe. It was covered under its global warranty, however.
The company said that in “some instances, where replacement parts are required from the country of origin”, delays, “while regrettable, are possible”. It said it regretted “any inconvenience caused to the customer in question and is currently working with the customer to understand any perceived shortcomings in its customer service and support procedure and to ensure that a satisfactory resolution to the customer’s issue is immediately put in place.”
Hung up on the price of cordless phones
STILL more on euro/sterling price differences. Chris Ball needed a new cordless phone for his house and, having picked the model that he reckoned would best suit his needs from a consumer magazine, he went online to find the best deals. Sites such as Amazon and Pixmania were selling the phone he wanted for around £73 (€81) while Currys in the UK was selling it for £79.99 (€90). “I called Currys in Ireland to find they had stock in their Liffey Valley branch. The price was €119.99 – some 25 per cent higher! I talked to the ‘customer service manager’ who aggressively defended his company’s policy in charging this huge mark-up saying their costs were much higher and ‘anyway, we can’t even buy it for that price’.”
Waking up to the price of coffee at Dunnes Stores
PETER STRANGE contacted us about some odd pricing he spotted in his local Dunnes Stores. A jar of Maxwell House, which had a sterling recommended price of £2.19 (€2.43) on the jar, was selling for €3.06 in the middle of January but increased in price two weeks later and was selling for €3.45 – or over €1 more than in the UK. “Is it any wonder people shop in Northern Ireland?” he asks.
