Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43126416
HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait times (2025)
211–220 of 249 posts
Re: HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait times (2025)
#212My god this is comic book villain level of business behaviour. Honestly whoever comes up with these decisions needs an exorcism.
Re: HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait times (2025)
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
One time, I needed this. I lost my phone with a physical SIM card and needed a replacement that day. Now I'm trying to remember the eSIM transfer flow to know if this is still an issue. But also, which MVNO should you go to? Carriers supposedly prioritize their own customers, so it feels a bit like running on spot instances.
eSIM transfers are an absolute nightmare on T-Mobile. I recently did two of them and both times, the transfer started but never finished, so I ended up with no service on either device. That means no ability to call their support line and no ability to receive the confirmation SMS they use to verify you are the correct person. They also immediately permanently nuke your physical SIM card so the only way to go back to…
Wow. That really sucks.
As a counterpoint (not sure if this was t-mobile, apple, or both), I just upgraded from an iPhone 11 with physical sim, to iPhone 17 with esim.
All I had to do was hold the new phone next to the old one, and it just transferred the line over and deactivated the old sim automatically. I wasn't even in the US (so not even on their network), and it was stupidly seamless.
It sounds like t-mobile support has gone downhill. Last time I had to contact support was 2020, and it was really easy back then. I rarely had to wait more than 5 minutes to get a human, and I once had an issue escalated to the "executive resolutions" team and resolved to my satisfaction the day it was opened.
Re: HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait times (2025)
#214> We’re always looking for ways to improve our customer service experience.
What a joke.
Anyway most of us already know to steer well clear of anything HP branded. It’s not the HP we remember from years past. Their junk is unreliable and they apparently have no interest in customer support.
I also love it when I spent ten minutes trying to locate the customer support line number (that is usually well hidden) for a recorded voice message reminding me that they have a website with the most generic answers to the most generic problems which I don’t have right now. Do you really think I’d be wasting my time going through your idiotic customer service number if I had found your generic answer in the FAQ helpful?
There is a special place in hell for the MBAs imagining new ways to maw everyone’s lives miserable.
Reminds me of this Norway govt ad about the job of an enshittifier: https://youtu.be/T4Upf_B9RLQ
Re: HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait times (2025)
#215Someone presumably pitched this idea within HP and other people agreed it was something they should try. I guess probably HP didn't put its best and brightest in charge of call centres but still, isn't that sort of amazing? I wonder if it's the same people who eventually decided it was a bad idea after all, or whether some other group discovered what was happening and got them to stop.
Let’s not kid ourselves, they knew exactly what they were doing. They were hoping people would just hang up and give up. This would save money in the short term but lose money in the long term but that’s what you get when the current quarter is all that matters. Anyway my experience with HP has taught me to never buy their products ever again.
> Let’s not kid ourselves, they knew exactly what they were doing.
Not at all, they say they’re “always looking for ways to improve customer experience” and just wanted to “encourage people to self solve” to increase customer satisfaction. /s
Re: HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait times (2025)
#216What a fantastic company HP used to be, back in the day. They led the way in scientific equipment and calculators, and even desktop computers for a brief moment. They even made PostScript laser printers that were built like tanks and were a by-word for reliability. Now they are just famous for being the printer brand everyone hates, and this is just scraping the bottom out of an already empty barrel.
Back in the 90s HP LaserJet 4 printers were manufactured by Canon. I suspect that that is no longer the case.
Re: HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait times (2025)
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think HP was absolutely right in doing this. How many times have you opened a GitHub issues only to come back an hour later with "nvm I figured it out" and close it? The hope is always that you figure it out autonomously.
If offering free support is too expensive, then they shouldn’t offer free support, instead of externalizing the costs by wasting the time of every customer who calls. Charge callers some small fee and refund it if it was a real issue.
Or just accept that support is a feature of whatever junk you’re selling and build it into the price.
Instead of being actively hostile towards the naive idiots who gave you money for your junk of a product which you now refuse to even support.
Re: HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait times (2025)
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
HP has plenty of competition. What they're doing is suicidal.
I honestly don't know who is still buying HP products, haven't seen one around me in years, probably just clueless people walking into a store and thinking "I've heard this name before"
Corporates. I see so many HP monitors, laptops. I guess their leasing terms are good, financially?
Re: HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait times (2025)
#219I have to admit i solve some support cases similarly. If I get questions about what seems to be a trivial thing I tend to wait a while with responding because most of the time it solves itself or the user discovered the plug was unplugged.
To be fair this is over text to I can perform some heuristic to select what I want to respond to immediately or not. Phone support doesn't have this luxury. It's the kind of situation where you wish shiboleet was a thing
Re: HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait times (2025)
#220Like Kevin Costner, I’m surprised that HP keeps getting work.