HP/COMPAQ IS FIRST ‘GRUNT LOG’ FOR FULL VALUE REVIEW

November 21, 2006 by PT Rothschild.

FVR’s FIRST ‘GRUNT LOG OF THE WEEK’
In keeping with the ‘Worst Person of the Day’, Keith Olbermann’s MSN e-column, the Full Value Review launches its first ever ‘GRUNT LOG OF THE WEEK’. This award is given to organizations, not individuals because the system makes the people, not the other way around. It is given in recognition of an organization that is so impacted with its own importance, it constipates the consumer’s desire for quick relief and satisfaction, hence a ‘grunt log’. Our first errrr ‘grunt log’, is Hewlett-Packard’s Compaq Computer Division Customer Service Department. Here’s why they won hands down.
After placing a call for a friend whose FS 7600 cathode ray tube monitor had just burned out, I was placed on hold at various times during the one hour I was on the phone speaking to someone on a land line’s bad connection. After being placed on hold one last time for about 20 minutes, I hung up. Calling back from a different land line and getting a better connection, I still had trouble speaking loud enough for CSR Brian to get all the serial numbers and such, on the first go-round. Again getting put on hold several times, the anxiousness to help me seemed to diminish when I said my friend didn’t want to pay $129 for the extended warranty that would have covered her ‘tower’ hard drive only for two extra years. To make matters worse, my friend’s monitor is only covered by the original warranty for seven days more, making this free repair/replacement time sensitive.
After spending an hour + again on the tech support line, I was turned over to another ‘Advanced’ somebody or other, who told me my friend would have to have a credit card number to offer as a guarantee that they would get the defective monitor back. When told that my friend didn’t have a credit card, but was willing to return the defective monitor first, so they could then send the replacement unit (since they obliviously think each person/customer is a ‘crook’, I was again put on hold. You would think this would be a reasonable solution, BUT NO, ‘we are not set up for that in this way’ I was told. In effect, you have to get a credit card or the HP/COMPAQ warranty is useless. I’ll bet you thought HP’s arrogance only started at the top. As my friend waits on a call back from someone who ‘can say yes’, in the next 48 business hours, we proudly declare the scandal ridden company HP and their COMPAQ Division, (umhh!) our first EVER ‘grunt log of the Week’ for being too plugged up for prompt customer service.
 

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