HP/COMPAQ tech support and customer service

Hi everyone,

i'm a new member of this forum. i just bought a compaq r3000z which i'm extrememly excited to receive!

AMD Athlon64 3000+ 1.80 GHz
Windows(R) XP Pro
Memory 512MB DDR SDRAM (1x512MB)
Hard Drive 60 GB 4200 RPM
4X DVD+RW/R & CD-RW Combo Drive
FREEUpgradeto54g(TM) Broadcom 802.11b/g
15.4" WSXGA+ screen
64MB NVIDIA(R) GeForce 4 440 Go& 5-in-1
12 Cell Lithium Ion Battery
3 year Express Repair Extended Warranty

Now my question is: what are your experiences with their tech support and customer service?? I've been reading so much negative feedback about their customer service and tech support, and they are at the very bottom on many surveys while dell and ibm are at the top. they say hold times are ridiculous, they are not very customer friendly if there was a problem with their computer, etc. the computer i have right now is an extremely outdated 400Mhz DELL desktop and their tech support was extremely helpful the rare times i needed it.

How have your experiences been???

Thanks! [ ]

revathi

 

I hated the phone support its in India, and very hard to hear them and understand them. I used the online chat support sense then. It can take them 10 minutes to respond to each message you type so don't count on a quick fix but its much easier to understand. When I called I keep getting forwarded and couldn't understand them.

Compaq R3000Z (CTO)
3400+ AMD 64
1 X 512MB RAM
GeForce 4 40 Go 64 MB
15.4 wide screen
WSXGA (1680 X 1050)
CD-RW,DVD+RW
40GB harddrive
Wireless b/g
Windows XP Home
12 Cell Battery

 

Their 1st level support reps are not the most technically inclined. Most of the time they read from their cue cards like a telemarketer. It gets old especially when you've already called and talked to someone about this earlier (hungup because they wanted me to try some stuff and call back after trying since it'll take a while to run). But after getting higher on the ladder, they become more experienced and knowledgable in what they're talking about. DaGreek is correct, it is very hard to hear them, I guess their phones are set to low or they're not talking into the mics.

-Vb-

 

cool, thanks for your replies.

hey dagreek...how do you like the screen? i got the same one for mine, and people keep saying that it's too small to see on a 15.4". do you think so? have you ever tried decreasing the resolution on that screen or do you run it as is?

 

Well it depends if your talking about the (1600 X 1050) screen I just sent back it was really nice and crisp but it really dose make things small for reading. I tured up the text size, icon size and everything else but I didn't lower the resolution because it would bug me to pay for it and not be able to use it. When your looking at text on a lot of web pages they are very small! Some text can't be made larger but exploer settings, so on my new computer I just ordered I got the 1200X800 screen

 

so why did you send it back? was it specifically b/c you decided you wanted the one with the lower resolution or was there a different problem? did you have to pay for shipping and handling on your own?

 

I have a UXGA screen, 15". You just scale up font sizes (under display > advanced) and it'll look like an XGA screen, with the sharpness of UXGA. And you can still fit lots of windows on your screen.

Compaq Presario 2800T
Pentium 4-M 1.6 GHz - 15" UXGA
512 MB RAM - 40 GB
ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 64 MB
Bought in 2002.

 

I sent mine back because I was worried about the GPU before I ordered it not working well for FPS's and I was right. Before I ordered though I called them to ask questions and the guy seemed so sure that I had the best system for games and the AMD chip would make up for the "slightly less powerful Geforce" well I could play a game but not that great! The aquamark score I got with the system was only a 10000 and 9000 of it was the cpu!!! I love that AMD cpu it is great! its just with a very bad GPU so now I've already got my in on on the way with its P4 and Radeon 9600 128MB which should be good enough to play new games coming up. This new machine also has a faster hard drive not offered in my prior one. I really really wish I could have gotten a AMD with the Radeon but its not in the cards I geuss.

 

When you say you sent it back, do you mean directly to HP? I've been considering some things. I'm not happy with the GeForce 4 Go 440, when the 9600 chip in the same budget PCs is so much faster and capable of things like pixel shaders. Also, I wanted to bump up the CPU speed but HP wasn't going to do it even though I asked the morning after I ordered.

I think it might be worth the hassle if I got what I wanted.

 

I want to share my experiences in the HP customer service, which are not good, though. In one of the posts, I said HP customer service is better than Toshiba! I meant totaly the opposite! Toshiba is way better. They called me back for my voice message one business day after I left the message! And below is my HP experience(s):

I was able to place my "exact" order of HP laptop(Zt3000 and will be returned tomorrow) in my second attempt. In my first order, there was a problem due to billing address. HP told me 3 times that they were going to call me back. but they never called(though, I called them more than 3 times)! And that resulted in decline of my first order and I was able to place second order 10 days after the first one! during that time I really suffered for not having PC at all! This is the first "unsatisfaction" story!

This time, I talked to them for return and after the first phone call, they sent me online label e-mail right away, however, I did not send the laptop back in few days and the label expired. I called them 3 days ago and the customer service representative said that she sent another online label email and I could be able to get the email in few minutes. It's been 3 days and there is no email yet(my email inbox has enough space to receive new mails!)

I am really pissed that 4 times they did not do what they were supposed to do!(The problems in the laptop are totaly another story!)

I hope what I have experienced so far are rare situations and just my unfortunate.

 

I sent mine back directly to HP there is a link off there shopping page for returns and I went there and called the number but any HP number will work. If your within the first 30 days from when you recieved it there is a no hassle return and they picked it up with fedex the next day and returned the money to my credit card with in 4 days I think. I didn't have to pay shipping on anything at all. Hope this helps, If you have the time to wait I can let you know how I like my new R3000T when I recieve it...

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by Eliwood

 

I tried to purchase a zd7000 and I returned 3 of them. Everytime because the front grill was dented due to the shipping packaging. My last purchase from HP was the Compaq R3000Z. I was very happy with it until I wanted to upgrade it and found out that I could only access one memory slot. I wanted to upgrade it to 2 gig but since I ordered it with the minimum memory, I could only add 1 gig for a total of 1.5 gig and not 2.0 gig as the website mentioned. I called tech support and they said, tuff luck and if you want to upgrade you need to remove the entire backend. Very little support and was very unhappy with the response!

 

The second slot is under the keyboard and there are many directions on how to access this slot.

zx5000 :: 2.4M :: 512 DDR :: 40gb 4200 RPM HD :: 15.4" :: Radeon 9600 Mobilty M10 :: Aquamark3 22,856

 

hahaha sorry to hear your bad calls peeps..

I'd rather be skateboarding

 

Only the bad experiences are posting so let me add a little something.

I don't own an HP. All I did was send in a simple email with some suggestions and comments on the compaq r3000z model and its HP equivalent. Didn't think anything would come from it, except helping to boost the amount of mail they were already getting.

I actually got a call from someone at HP in direct response to my email about a laptop that I didn't purchase. That's a first for me. Maybe some of these "bad stories" are due to bad luck or just one or two bad experiences. (No hate to anyone who has repeated bad luck)