An Open Letter To Mark Hurd

Question

Hi Mark,
I’m an HP customer. One who really loved her convenient, manageable, cute, personal HP printer/scanner/copier until it suddenly stopped functioning. This letter is not to fault your products. Rather it’s your policies I have issue with.
Your tagline is something about making the computer personal again, but your service has felt anything but personal. Upon realizing I had a printer malfunction, I tried to figure out online what might be wrong by going through your troubleshooting manual. No dice. I couldn’t find anything about an “E” appearing where numbers should be. I assumed it meant “Error”, but not being tech savvy, I instantly doubted myself and thought, Well, what if it means Empty? What then? Could it be that simple? Ugh, I need help.
So I decided to pick up the phone and call customer service where I was patched through to a representative after about 10 minutes with an automated system. This man, who refused to give me his ID number saying that it was against company policy to release such information, spent more time taking more of the same basic information only to tell me that my warranty has expired and that if I wanted to talk to anyone, it would cost me $34.99.
This astounded me. We had not even gotten to what the problem might be. My mind raced, Am I really going to pay someone $34.99 for them to tell me that I need to replace a cartridge? I tried to explain this dilemma to him, but was getting nowhere so I asked to speak with his supervisor. I was then informed that supervisors are reserved only for customers whose products are still under warranty. This, too, felt counterintuitive. Why would I need a warranty to talk to a supervisor? I talk to supervisors for companies who never gave me a warranty in the first place, I thought. He said I could email in my problem at no charge, but I wanted to talk through the problem with someone in a reasonable amount of time. Not write down word for word, blinking light by blinking light, button by button what was going on and then never know whether I’ll get a response (although it looks like that’s where I ended up anyway…touche, Mark) or whether my explanation was coherent. I explained to the man that I wasn’t paying any amount of money to talk to someone about my problem and that I was willing to remain on the line until he was able to figure out a way to help me. That is his job, right? To help me fix a problem? I wanted to give him an opportunity to be a problem solver. I needed help, plain and simple. Just someone to talk to.
Well, he hung up on me. Said I was a waste of his time. So I tweeted about it. For all the HP accounts on Twitter, one guy responded to me. He was very nice and at least attempted to be helpful. Wouldn’t you know it, he was in marketing, not customer service. I gave him my phone number and my email and two weeks (two weeks!) later I received a phone call from a Mr. Dan Finn from the executive office. I thought, Whew! Finally, the executive office will know what to do. And they’ll be a lot more invested in my satisfaction as a customer. I couldn’t wait to talk to Dan. After a few missed calls and bad timing, Dan and I finally connected.
In my dreams, this is what Dan said, “I understand what you’re saying, let’s see if we can’t get someone to talk to you. I’m sorry you’ve had an unpleasant experience so far, and rather than just TELL you how sorry I am and how much HP values you as a customer the way everyone else has, I’m going to prove it to you and try to help you fix your problem. If it’s a quick fix there’ll be no problem, but it’s possible that it’s a bigger problem and then we can talk about the cost of any repairs. I’ll stay on the line while I patch you through to a technician so the three of us can talk this through and I'll make sure you get taken care of.”
In reality, this is what Dan said, “You can pay $34.99 to talk to a technician or you can chat online or email. Ma’am it’s stated pretty clearly on the warranty. I mean, your product was purchased in 2005. So your warranty’s been expired for a while now.” Don’t get me wrong, Dan was a nice guy. He was just doing his job, much like customer service representative #1 from the first call (except CSR#1 did get a little sassy and, oh yeah, he hung up the phone on me). When I asked if I could write you a letter to advise on how flawed I feel your customer service policy is, he gave me the address to his office where he promised to consider my thoughts, file away my letter to a place where it would never see the light of day and you certainly would never be bothered with it. Well played, Mark. You train them well. So I decided to post this somewhere where whether or not you see it, certainly other potential and current customers will.
Let me ask you something: Am I an HP customer as long as I own an HP product, or only as long as that product is under warranty? Just because you can no longer assure me that the product I paid for will function properly, does that mean that I’m no longer deserving your help? When was it ever a good business plan to LIMIT customer service? If that ever worked at some point in history, you're sadly behind the curve in realizing it's not going to fly today. That doesn’t sound like you want to keep things really personal. Not one bit. I’d love to have been a fly on the wall at whatever meeting that decision was made at:
Suit #1: So, now that we’ve got the terms of this warranty written up, what do we do if a customer needs something after it expires?
Mark Hurd: Screw ‘em.
What really gets me is that I’m willing to pay to have it repaired! I understand nothing lasts forever and sometimes things go wrong and need to be fixed. If you would just let someone talk to me about my problem long enough to figure out what’s going on, I’d pay someone to fix it. But pay someone to tell them what my problem is?  That doesn’t sound right to me. Does it sound right to you? Don’t help your customers because it's an opportunity to squeeze more money from them, help them because you have pride in the quality of the products you sell. I’m really sad, not only because this is the #2 most frustrating situation I’ve had behind getting cable installed (they finally came) but also because I LOVED your product, and now I can no longer use it and I have no idea why.
It crossed my mind that this is all a ploy to just get me to never fix the old product and buy a brand spankin’ new HP printer, I’m sorry, Mark, but if that's the case, you’ve failed. Because after this experience I have no intention of ever purchasing another HP product now that I know how very little you value your customers. This is a dangerous policy you’ve got here, Mark. Customer loyalty is so important. Especially now, I’d say it’s critical to a company’s survival in these tough economic times. I urge you to reconsider your current policy when it comes to your customers. Either that, or create a new advertising campaign. I’m dying to know: What exactly about HP is making the computer personal again? If you read this, that question is not rhetorical. Please let me know. Call your executive office, Dan will know how to reach me.
These kinds of bad practices lead to bad PR. If you don’t want bad publicity, do the right thing and be good to your customers.
Thanks and best,
Rebecca

Answer 1

Restrict them from using? But why? Just because they were being objective, and thus didn't quite agree with your opinion? Besides, i believe it is because of the HP employees taking up their personal time to help resolve other customers' issue for free and nothing else in return, that the forum has been as helpful as it has been so far. Without us, there'll just be more questions, not many answers and more rants and frustration-venting.
Message Edited by DexterM on 02-26-2009 03:45 AM
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I am an ex-HP Employee.