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HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait times (2025)

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Re: HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait times (2025)

#221

Post by halapro »

nkrisc wrote: post #153
halapro wrote: post #86

Earlier 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.

Paid B2C support is a real tough sale. A lot of low-cost airlines don't provide support at all (if not in person), I guess because it's not practical. If costs could be covered this way, everyone could offer support. Even Google! And yet they don't.

Re: HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait times (2025)

#222

Post by joecool1029 »

craftkiller wrote: post #189
dehrmann wrote: post #89

Earlier 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…

> When you request a QR code, even though you provide the EID, they will ask for an IMEI number.

Everything else you say is accurate but they do not require this, T-Mobile is the only major in the US that doesn’t match EID to IMEI. I know because I use a removable esim (esim.me) euicc with multiple phones. I have to read the super long eid off to support to activate it. I cannot activate service on this card with verizon or at&t as its eid doesn’t match to an imei for them.

Re: HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait times (2025)

#223

Post by pjmlp »

justin66 wrote: post #188
pjmlp wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, I used HP-UX across a few years, but never heard of heat moments that would require using an extinguisher on the server room.

I only ever heard of HPUX workstations catching fire. No idea about their servers.

This was during 1999-2002 and 2004-2006, HP-UX 10.x and 11.

Re: HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait times (2025)

#224

Post by joecool1029 »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #213
craftkiller wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

Apple’s system mostly works. If you need to reissue an esim without being able to transfer from an existing device on T-Mobile though need to either call in and give imei or get past the chatbot and there’s a page text support can give you to enter details. I was never able to successfully use the shit t-life app’s manage esim option.

Re: HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait times (2025)

#225

Post by ericpauley »

SapporoChris wrote: post #195
neild wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mint (T-Mobile MVNO) has been great for me, $20/month/line and my one experience with international travel was good ($20 for 10 days). I used to be on Verizon and the quality of service doesn’t seem any worse while the price is dramatically lower.

Mint works well until it doesn't. I travel a lot and use voice over ip(VoIP). One day I called and got an automated message that my account needed funds. It didn't, my annual payment was months away. My call to tech support was the generic worst. He insisted there was trouble with my current cell tower and I should reboot my phone. (ignoring the fact that I was able to get automated message). I explained I was using…

Insisting on saying VoIP to the Mint rep instead of WiFi Calling (the term used by Apple, Google, Mint, and practically everyone else) is asking for a bad time.

Re: HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait times (2025)

#226

Post by craftkiller »

joecool1029 wrote: post #222
craftkiller wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> When you request a QR code, even though you provide the EID, they will ask for an IMEI number. Everything else you say is accurate but they do not require this, T-Mobile is the only major in the US that doesn’t match EID to IMEI. I know because I use a removable esim (esim.me) euicc with multiple phones. I have to read the super long eid off to support to activate it. I cannot activate service on this card with ver…

I think you're misunderstanding. I'm not saying T-Mobile locks the EID and IMEI together. I'm saying their tech support will completely ignore any EID you send them and instead look up an EID in their database based on the IMEI you send them. If you manage to convince the tech support to actually listen to you and use the correct EID then yes, everything will work out fine and you'll be able to move the card across devices.

I was also using a removable esim (from jmp.chat) and they did this to me three times. Each time it went like this:

> Me: Please send me a QR code to download my esim. My EID is XXXXXXXX

> Them: Thanks for providing your EID, please send me your IMEI (the first time this was just a plain message, the 2nd and 3rd time they sent me a link to a form to submit my IMEI to them)

> Me:

> Them: What is your e-mail address

> Me: My e-mail address is XXXXX@XXXX.XXXX

and then they'd send me a QR code. I'd then attempt to download it to my jmp.chat esim and I'd get an error that the EID was incorrect. Then, I'd try using the QR code to activate the built-in eSIM on the phone with the IMEI that I sent them, and it would work, proving that they were looking up the EID for the IMEI that I sent them rather than paying attention to the EID that I started the chat with.

The 4th and final time, I sent them my Librem 5's IMEI which had never been on T-Mobile and does not support eSIM. They told me that the phone was carrier locked, I assured them it wasn't and explicitly told them "it is important the QR code is for the EID I provided you. The past representatives have ignored that, leading to the error message ". THAT time they finally listened and sent a QR code for the correct EID, which let me download the eSIM to my jmp.chat card. At that point I was able to move the card across devices without issue.

Re: HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait times (2025)

#227

Post by throwaway2037 »

btreesOfSpring wrote: post #128
BobaFloutist wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>my AHT flagged me Is that "American Hairless Terrier" or "Aldershot Railway Station"?

Acronym use here to single being part of an in-group. It is one of the most annoying shift in tech language over the past decade. I partly blame it on all the certification testing that has popped up over that time frame. It isn't like there hasn't always been tech acronyms but they are so causally communicated these days without regard for audience.

    > over the past decade
You must be young. Do you not think there were similarly acronym infested tech speak in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s? All of those decades also had plenty of certification testing.

Re: HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait times (2025)

#228

Post by craftkiller »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #213
craftkiller wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

> Last time I had to contact support was 2020, and it was really easy back then

Looks like that was 2 CEOs ago (Mike Sievert in 2020 and Srini Gopalan in 2025) so one of them probably bears the responsibility for this decline.

2024 might have been the start of forcing us to fight with toasters: https://www.t-mobile.com/news/business/t-mobile-launches-int...

and 2024 seems to also be when they locked down their esim transfer process: https://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/1cnphk4/android_es...

So I guess Mike Sievert drove t-mobile into the ground?

Re: HP trialed mandatory 15-minute support call wait times (2025)

#229

Post by sigseg1v »

dwedge wrote: post #104
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no breaking through it because those LLM replies are not tweaked for 5 year olds due to managerial decree, they're tweaked for the average callers to those support departments due to cold hard reality. If 99 out of 100 callers are wrong, are frustrated, and don't know how to clear their cookies, and then you call in, they'll treat you like those 99. Even if you're correct, just cheerfully trying to be helpfu…

Is this not begging the question that 99 out of 100 were wrong? This totally depends if the aim is the solve problems or to reduce support costs - which are not necessarily the same thing. If only 1% of tickets ever got past level 1 then okay but I doubt this is the case in most places. And if you already tried to fix your issue online there is nothing more frustrating than being told to do so repeatedly while on hol…

I have a very similar issue where yesterday I found a company sent me to collections for not paying for an item that is paid for and I have the receipts and bank statements for. Trying to get the chat bot to drop the charge on my account is literally not possible, and I understand why, but why is it so excruciating to get in contact with someone to resolve this? The effort levels are totally disproportionate; they have an automated system that sends me emails and threatens me if I don't pay, but I cannot similarly have a 0 or 1 button process that removes that error.
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