Re: OT: A Message to Hewlett-Packard's Chief Executive Officer
- From: "lawhonac@xxxxxxxxxx" <lawhonac@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 18 May 2007 12:48:23 -0700
On May 17, 6:27 pm, Tanya AKA MissT74 <43084...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I'm still interested in knowing if and when you ever get a respond from the
boss.
T
On May 17 2007 3:55 PM, lawho...@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
On May 17, 4:34 pm, "WuzYoungOnceToo"
wrote:
On May 17 2007 4:08 PM, lawho...@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:
A few days ago I placed an order for over $3,000.00 worth of computer
hardware and software from HP - Hewlett-Packard. My computer has not
yet arrived, but I had a (fairly simple) "technical question" that I
wanted answered. Since I paid $349.00 for three years of HP's "Total
Care" (as part of my purchase), I figured a call to their sales folks
would go without a hitch. After 90 minutes on the phone, (and no less
than five transfers and one 20-minute wait while I was put on hold!),
it has come down to this: One of HP's sales employees told me to send
an email to Mr. Michael Hurd, Hewlett-Packard's Chief Executive
Officer. We'll see where this goes ...
Dear Chairman Hurd:
[I expressed some regrets to Chairman Hurd about the necessity of
taking this "dire step" of contacting him directly, but indicated that
I was doing so on the direct recommendation of one of his sales
department employees - a lady named "Jessica". (It seemed that nobody
at HP wanted to give me their full name or their email address.)]
I spoke with a lady named "Shauna" in your sales department who
basically told me where I could get off, so I hope you will excuse me
if I seem just a bit frustrated.
I have tried repeatedly over the past 90 minutes to have the people on
your tech support lines answer a simple question regarding how the
system drive, (commonly referred to as the C: drive), will be
allocated on my new system. (I have placed an order for purchase of a
customized HP Pavilion dv9500t CTO NB notebook computer. My order
number is: H100375033. My name is Alan C. Lawhon.)
If I can't get an answer to this simple question, I am going to refuse
delivery of my computer and obtain a refund.
I have a desktop computer here at home that runs Microsoft Windows XP
SP2. The drive partition containing the operating system, (i.e. the
C: drive), occupies approximately 20 Gigabytes of hard disk storage
space. Incredibly, over the past 2-3 years of use, my system drive
partition has filled up to over 90 percent of the 20-Gig capacity!
Last night I attempted to defragment my C: drive partition and
received a message informing me that there was insufficient disk space
to perform a defrag operation. The warning message instructed me to
delete files in order to free up disk space on my C: drive - an option
which is not particularly appealing to me.
This naturally raises a question as to how much disk space will be
allocated to the system drive on my dv9500t notebook. This will be my
first experience running (and using) Microsoft's "Vista" operating
system, which I understand is a resource hog. When I was going
through the menu options to customize my system, there were no
technical details to indicate how much disk space would be allocated
to the system drive partition. I have ordered a dual hard drive
configuration with two 120 Gigabyte SATA 5400 RPM physical drives. My
feeling is that the [logical] partition where the operating system
will be installed, (i.e. the C: drive), should be allocated for at
least 50 Gigabytes of disk space. If you want to have one of the two
120-Gig physical drives allocated exclusively to the C: drive, (and
the second physical drive allocated totally to a D: partition), that
will be fine with me.
Whatever the case, what I want to avoid is having the system drive
partition allocated with just the bare minimum of hard disk storage
space. I would rather have 2-3 (or three to four) times more space
allocated to the system drive (and never have to worry about running
out of disk space) than find myself - a year from now - having to
carry my notebook to the shop to have the operating system
reinstalled.
If you can answer this simple question to my satisfaction, (before the
Fed Ex guy arrives), then I will accept delivery. If not, (or if this
message is ignored), I will refuse delivery and send a [snail mail]
copy of this email to Mr. Michael Hurd, who I believe is HP's Chairman
and Chief Executive Officer. The last time I corresponded with a top
executive at HP was Mr. David Packard and that was nearly twenty years
ago. On that occasion, I was praising your company for the excellent
calculator products you make, (specifically the HP-12C), which I have
continued to use over the years. (In fact, I bought a new "25th
Anniversary Edition" of the 12-C in just the past few days!) To my
astonishment, both Mr. Packard (and Mr. John Young) responded to my
letter with some very gracious comments, so it pains me to have to
send a message like this.
Sincerely,
Alan C. Lawhon
P.S. Somebody (like a supervisor or a manager) might want to talk to
this "Shauna" lady and explain to her that it's not good business
practice to "lecture" customers and tell customers (or prospective
customers) what HP can't do.
The short answer is that, unless you need to partition the C: drive for
multiple OSes then there's no reason to partition it at all. So you
should end up with a 120 GB C: drive and a 120 GB D: drive (roughly
speaking...actual usable space will be slightly less than 120 GB for each
drive.)
- Show quoted text -
Dear Wuz:
I just had another "phone chat" with somebody at HP. (I think the
young man's name was Mike Johnson or Barry Johnson - or someone with a
last name of Johnson.) Interestingly, I was calling to cancel my
order as I was not going to accept delivery (and go through all the
hassle) of a return if nobody at HP was willing (or able) to answer my
question. "Mike" (definitely) earned his pay today - and saved HP's
bacon. Not only did he know the answer to my question, but he had
some very interesting information about Microsoft's new "Vista"
operating system.
I will look in to this and check it out further, but Vista
[apparently] has an "automatic disk defragmenter" capability.
According to Mike, once a week Vista will perform an automatic
[unattended] disk defrag. So, the problem I'm currently having with
my overloaded C: partition (on my XP box) should NEVER be a problem
with my Pavilion notebook. Mike further assured me that with Vista's
automatic defrag capability, I should never have a problem defragging
my hard drives. Nice ...
So now I've got some egg on my face as I explained to Mike that
there's no telling what will happen when Chairman Hurd has some of his
people check in to my complaint. (I also told Mike that I wish he had
been the first person I had talked to since he addressed my concerns
very nicely and knew exactly how to answer my question.) Mike told me
not to worry about it, that "checking things out" is what folks like
Mr. Hurd are paid to do.
The thing that ticked me off was the manner of the sales people that I
had talked to previously. One of them in particular, a lady named
"Shauna" seemed to be incensed that I was even asking a technical
question in the first place. She actually lectured me about how HP
does business and told me, "Nobody can answer a question like that!"
She went on to tell me that "all that stuff is done at the factory,"
and, "nobody is going to look you up to explain it!" (I am
paraphrasing just a bit, but those are pretty close to her exact
words.) Maybe the QA folks were monitoring the conversation and can
play it back and see if I was out of line. Whatever the case, I am
paying over $3,000.00 of my own money for this computer, so I have a
right to ask whatever question I want.
I don't know, maybe she was having a bad hair day or something, but
she sure as hell pissed me off. That, more than anything else, was
what prompted me to send the email to Mr. Hurd.
Alan C. Lawhon
Huntsville, Alabama
_______________________________________________________________
* New Release: RecPoker.com v2.2 -http://www.recpoker.com- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -
Tanya:
I have received a rather quick response to my inquiry. Here is the
initial response to my communication delivered via email:
Dear Alan:
Thank you for taking the time to send HP your comments. We apologize
for the difficulties you've experienced. Your comments have been
escalated to the appropriate people within Hewlett-Packard for review.
Your input is important to us and very much appreciated.
Sincerely,
CEO Customer Relations
It's all kind of moot now though. As I indicated earlier in this
thread, (see reply No. 13), I finally got in touch with somebody at HP
who actually knew the answer to my question. Of course, the ironic
thing about this is that I didn't reach this person until AFTER I had
sent the unhappy message to Chairman Hurd and, even more ironic, I was
calling [this last time] to cancel my order. As I pointed out, (in
reply No. 13), if I had been lucky enough to talk with this Mike
Johnson guy on my very first call, there wouldn't have been a
problem. So now it looks like they'll do their "investigation" of my
complaint and somebody might get reprimanded for the way I was handled
and that will be it. I am going to accept delivery of my new computer
because it has been my experience - over a period of nearly 25 years -
that HP makes pretty good stuff. Regretably, this was the first (and
only) time that I have ever had a negative experience with HP, but
this "Shauna" lady literally berated me for asking a technical
question. I tried to stay calm and maintain my composure while she
lectured me about how HP does business, but after I got off the phone
with her; I just became incensed and said to myself: "The hell with
this! I'm cancelling my order and buying from Dell or Gateway
instead." When I called to cancel, this Mike Johnson guy handled me
very deftly. He knew just exactly what to say and how to reassure
me. (He was also very knowledgable about HP's products.) As the
conversation [with Mike] was concluding, I thanked him for his support
and told him that his managers should reward him with a 20-30 percent
pay raise on his next performance appraisal. He thanked me and wished
me a happy weekend. This guy (Mike Johnson) - who I'll probably never
meet in person - is just the kind of person that companies like HP
need manning their tech support and sales lines. Instead, they have
people over in India - who I can barely understand - taking these
support calls. That was part of the frustration in dealing with this
situation - there was a definite "language barrier" problem as I got
transferred (and passed around) at least five or six times.
I have paid $349.00 for an extended 3-year "Total Care" warranty
package. If I have another "bad experience" with technical support, I
will probably pay an extra thousand dollars to a local "mom and pop"
computer store and forego dealing with these large "super efficient"
companies like Dell and HP. When you need help, it's just too much of
a hassle - unless you're lucky and manage to get connected to an
employee like Mike Johnson.
Alan C. Lawhon
Huntsville, Alabama
.
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