As you all know, I just got my laptop back. Mysteriously diagnosed with a burnt motherboard/BIOS system, and guess what? I asked for diagnosis for my laptop and I never got one in the end. Only an assumption, but no report of what really happened - before I got my receipt.
This is my worst experience with these stupid official service centres for a certain product.
Which means that the person who sent my laptop into the service centre is not at fault. But whoever is behind the organisation, training of the staffs and allocation of workers on wherever they're mounted to, is at fault.
I received a call last week, saying that I won't be able to receive my laptop back too quick only because they have to wait for their parts to replace my laptop's motherboard.
Which results to bad quality control problem - until a certain extend that all Compaq/HP laptops actually had the same problem and they eventually ran out of parts due to underestimated units?
Well, I leave the imagination up to you, but whatever's going through your mind is definitely correct, even if an elephant crapped all over their factories or an alien abduction took place and rigged everything because they hate commercialised nonsense, and it's going to be powered by a Windows operating system.
Or better still, Apple supporters decided to tear everything down that relates to Windows.
So, let's not focus on the hatred I have against Vista this time, but plain ol' customer service. For HP, it's extremely bad. If it was on a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give it a rating of -59156572234.55.
Why?
Firstly, I called the customer care centre, or whatever that place is called, a total of 6 times. And out of 6 times, my call was mysteriously rejected 4 times. Dumb, isn't it? Must've been those damned caller IDs hooked onto their phones.
And when I called for the first time, somewhere around 8.30am, 2 days ago, I gave in every particulars required, and they said that their engineer would call me back. Guess what? Typical Malaysian service - they would forget the bloody job on the next day. Plus it was on a Monday, so the person who answered my call was either drunk, emo, suffering from the Monday Blues, or all of those at once. After all, that croaking in his voice explains everything anyways. If you heard the conversation, I would've been his English teacher because I made him repeat whatever he said due to his distorted voice.
Imagine Louis Armstrong - whose nuts got bitten off by a Tasmanian Devil.
And I'm not sure how telephones work, but I'm sure once you lift it up, dial the numbers you wish to dial, it (somehow) should direct you to whoever you wish to speak to. Unfortunately, from this service, I waited for 4 hours and no call from any engineers. I don't blame the engineers, because this croaky frog just forgot about it. Even if he did not forget about it, I swear that something dropped so hard on his head, till he got an amnesia.
And I hope he forgets who he is if he has that amnesia.
.. And die a slow death, of course.
That's the first point. Secondly, would be the wonderful database system they have. When I mention the words, HP, or Hewlett Packard, or whatever that name is called, you should already know that they're an established computer company. Like Z'Tronics, Acer, Asus, Dell, so on and so forth. And this next problem I faced, is rather.. cute.
I called the Customer Crap Centre again, and I admit that half of it was my fault because I didn't have my invoice with me. But that doesn't mean that I'm restricted to know of my unit's status when I've already submitted my details to HP themselves. I remember in Nokia, it works in a way that you don't need to show them what phone you have, or what serial number is mounted on the phone, or the battery, or the invoice number related to the phone you purchased, or anything. Just give them your last name, confirm it, and they'll come up with your whole transaction, and status of any sort.
As for HP, when they seem to be proud sponsorships in conjunction to some of the major companies in this world, they
can't even won't even bother
trying to find out my unit status through my name, handphone number confirmation, IC, date of the invoice, etc. It's like, everything revolves around a couple of bloody number that's 2400xxxxxx. And without that, you will lose your genitals, somehow.
It's funny? I thought there's this term saying that "The Customer's Always Right". I demanded to know of my unit's status and I was restricted, like as if I was speaking on behalf of Mr. Jean Louis Sibert. Hello? I have full rights because I paid a bloody lum sum of RM4k just for that laptop and I don't even have the rights to find out my unit's status?
Oh. I must've missed out some bribery fees.
Or maybe it's because I'm Eurasian. Or maybe it's because I bought it from Penang and it's
kampung compared to units being purchased from Kuala Lumpur.
Or maybe the person who intercepted my phone had buttocks intercourse and was pissed about it being too imperfect because I could hear that in his tone.
So, that only led me to one choice. Since telecommunication is so bad in HP, I went to the HQ itself, and demanded to know of my unit's status. You know what? It only took the person who served me 5 minutes just to find out that I could pick up my laptop the next day after 10am.
You see, that's efficiency over there. But the hassle that I had to go through to achieve that customer efficiency was horrible. In fact, go save more cost by disabling the telecommunication system or customer care department because it's no different from having one and not having one. In the end, you serve customers badly.
Maybe you don't serve customers badly, but if that was the case, why was I treated in a way that I felt not welcomed by HP? It's not like I purchased this laptop without tax, or a pirated one? The only thing I did was to change the RAM from 1gb to 2gbs because Vista is just plain nonsense on 1gbs of RAM.
Now with that said, it's funny how your employers are being trained to say something like, "
I'm sorry sir, but your laptop is being put on hold because...". That is the exact same thing I got on the next day, when I went to pick up my laptop at 10.30am. As stated in the post, I am able to receive my laptop anytime after 10am, and that was according to one of the person working there.
So you're telling me that my laptop was still being put on hold? My laptop got raped by a siberian tiger? Or Bill Gates mysteriously decided to enhance my laptop?
I did not know of what reason was the cause and that's the problem, you see? They weren't trained to tell me the problems being caused for my laptop's delay after someone mentions it only once.
I hate to say this, but I had to rudely interrupt her and explain my situation. THEN only this girl by the counter, decided to check with the engineer and guess what? My laptop was ready.
And I realised one thing. Although I know that I am able to pick up my laptop after 10am on that day, but I did not receive a call or a notification saying that my laptop was available. Maybe they wanted to practice that
Edison Chen scam, but my laptop's free from pornography, sorry!
So, an organisation with bad customer service, with workers who are constantly facing miscommunication problems, no notifications when whatever you sent in is ready, and extremely rude Indians on the customer service department makes it rather interesting.
In fact, I
think am sure that the Indian parking attendants who works at my place are much more polite in asking for parking fees compared to those hooligans.
And from what I see is that, the lower you pay them, the more polite and efficient they are in their work. So whatever it is, just cut everybody's pay in the customer care department. It'll work somehow.
I am satisfied that I got my laptop back, but I'm rather embarassed that it has a HP logo. In fact, I had bad experiences with HP before and this just keeps on piling up somehow. I was planning to change my laptop soon after I save money, and until then, I just can't wait.
And if you think that I don't have the rights to publicise all this on this blog, you're wrong in every way. It all comes back that I'm still extremely disappointed with the service you all provided. You should re-train everybody and make sure they've got a feminine touch, so they don't sound like assholes over the phone.
You know that I love you. :)
You know that I love you. :)
