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Though I have been quite cranky about Apple in recent years, I was reminded today about something they are 'best-in-class' in... still (and probably always will be).
My in-laws, though they love their iPhones and iPads, still buy Windows machines. And in particular, my father-in-law has an affinity for HP. I have no idea why, as his HP products have never treated him particularly well. He tends to buy the higher-end models, so it's not like price is paramount to him. Anyway, they recently bought a new, mid-range, build-to-order, 17" laptop for my mother-in-law. Since there's no easy way to transfer data/docs/settings over to a new Win10 machine from an old Win7 machine, they gave it to me to try to make that happen.
Out of the box, the WiFi card was non-functional. Drivers were installed, they were at the latest revision, everything should have been peachy, but the machine simply couldn't find *any* wireless networks at all. I live in a suburban subdivision that is well-populated with WiFi and I could see that at least a dozen networks are within easy reach from my old MBP. But this brand new machine couldn't see anything. How this passed whatever serves for quality control at HP, is beyond me.
This necessitated a call to HP, which in-and-of-itself was not easy to initiate. HP's website won't give you the number until you jump through some hoops. The very first hoop, identifying the model number, was impossible since HP doesn't actually stamp a model number in the area they said it should be in, on this particular model. After some time, I finally got the phone number and stepped through what is probably the world's worst IVR. After grilling me for 5 minutes, it referred me back to the HP website. I think it only allowed me to speak with a human when I yelled "attendant" at it, repeatedly.
Anyway, you can imagine what comes next... 30 minute of inane troubleshooting only to verify what I already knew. The WiFi adapter was either defective for the factory or didn't have antennas connected to it. As a new, just out of the box machine, I didn't want to open it to verify, but I can pretty much guarantee the latter to be the issue. And since it was build-to-order, my only recourse was to send it back to HP for a refund. They couldn't tell me how long it would take to actually get that refund, but they did promise to honor the original purchase price when I re-order the product. There was no option to have a replacement proactively shipped, unless I was willing to have them charge me again and sit on that expense while I wait for a refund of the original unit (which, being handled by a 3rd party, is probably not going to happen swiftly).
I'm not at all surprised by any of this of course, but I am surprised that companies like HP (which has been circling the drain for the better part of a decade, at least in terms of their PC division), still can't figure out the basic tenants of customer service. Not to mention why companies like Apple can charge such a premium price for what amounts to commodity hardware. It's not just about the hardware... customer service counts for something too!
All that said, if you do happen to be in the market for a Windows machine, HP still sucks as badly as it ever did.
My in-laws, though they love their iPhones and iPads, still buy Windows machines. And in particular, my father-in-law has an affinity for HP. I have no idea why, as his HP products have never treated him particularly well. He tends to buy the higher-end models, so it's not like price is paramount to him. Anyway, they recently bought a new, mid-range, build-to-order, 17" laptop for my mother-in-law. Since there's no easy way to transfer data/docs/settings over to a new Win10 machine from an old Win7 machine, they gave it to me to try to make that happen.
Out of the box, the WiFi card was non-functional. Drivers were installed, they were at the latest revision, everything should have been peachy, but the machine simply couldn't find *any* wireless networks at all. I live in a suburban subdivision that is well-populated with WiFi and I could see that at least a dozen networks are within easy reach from my old MBP. But this brand new machine couldn't see anything. How this passed whatever serves for quality control at HP, is beyond me.
This necessitated a call to HP, which in-and-of-itself was not easy to initiate. HP's website won't give you the number until you jump through some hoops. The very first hoop, identifying the model number, was impossible since HP doesn't actually stamp a model number in the area they said it should be in, on this particular model. After some time, I finally got the phone number and stepped through what is probably the world's worst IVR. After grilling me for 5 minutes, it referred me back to the HP website. I think it only allowed me to speak with a human when I yelled "attendant" at it, repeatedly.
Anyway, you can imagine what comes next... 30 minute of inane troubleshooting only to verify what I already knew. The WiFi adapter was either defective for the factory or didn't have antennas connected to it. As a new, just out of the box machine, I didn't want to open it to verify, but I can pretty much guarantee the latter to be the issue. And since it was build-to-order, my only recourse was to send it back to HP for a refund. They couldn't tell me how long it would take to actually get that refund, but they did promise to honor the original purchase price when I re-order the product. There was no option to have a replacement proactively shipped, unless I was willing to have them charge me again and sit on that expense while I wait for a refund of the original unit (which, being handled by a 3rd party, is probably not going to happen swiftly).
I'm not at all surprised by any of this of course, but I am surprised that companies like HP (which has been circling the drain for the better part of a decade, at least in terms of their PC division), still can't figure out the basic tenants of customer service. Not to mention why companies like Apple can charge such a premium price for what amounts to commodity hardware. It's not just about the hardware... customer service counts for something too!
All that said, if you do happen to be in the market for a Windows machine, HP still sucks as badly as it ever did.
Grin
