A former Hewlett-Packard worker who could barely wait for their non-disclosure-agreement to end so they could spill company secrets to The Consumerist has more, along with clarifications about what was posted yesterday.

Everything I have given is accurate as of the last day I worked there. It’s not that HP is a bad company. People just need to know what they are getting themselves in to when they buy HP.

1: Yes, the imaging drum/image transfer assembly will stop the printer from working if you go over the page count. Anything with the word “transfer.” Be careful with the NV ram reset because it erases everything.

2: Support for home computing products is done via flow chart.

3: HP considers countries like Canada to be not worth the time or effort to market to. The market base in there is equivalent to one of the smaller American States. If you are calling in from Canada, you have to prove that you are in warranty and some of the features that Americans get, Canadians don’t.

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4: Often heard from US customers: “Thank god you speak American! You’re not someone from Inja(India)!” Even CSRs hate dealing the HP outsource center in India. I wasn’t joking about speaking a “variant of American.” Yes, I speak English.

5: Back door link to HP. Only for onsite Tech Support: http://learning.compaq.com/wbt/e9-10200-wb/default.htm
This has stuff like how to field strip your products. Info varies by products.

6: Outsourced companies pay their people crap and like all things, you get what you pay for. If it were to become unionized, the company would fold up like a house of cards.

7: With regards to HP Parts: Here’s an example of a conversation had by a CSR: “Oh, you haven’t gotten your wingding yet? Okay, you should have gotten that a couple of days ago. Can I put you on hold while I deal with that?” (uses other line to call HP Parts, sees on his screen what is in his inventory) “Hey, this is Dude over in CSR, how come Mr. Yoda hasn’t gotten his wingding yet?”
“Oh, we’re all out.”
“No you’re not! I can see 16 on the availability!”
“Oh, sorry, I meant its on hold cause its a duplicate order.”
“No its not – its the first order done for this customer in a year.”
“Oh the customer must have ordered it wrong then.”
“No, we did the order for the customer.”
“Well, there’s nothing that we can do then.”
“Tell ya what – go do the job you were trained for or my next call is to your supervisor and he will do what he was trained for and fire you. Now get that wingding out Pronto!”
“You can’t do that.”
“I’m HP Internal, and I have a customer on my line. You will do it now.” (back to customer) “Sorry, for the delay sir. I will have that wingding out to you via (shipping) right away. Can I call you back in a couple days to make sure you’ve got it?”
Now, multiply the above by many calls and many irate CSRs per day and you’ll wind up with a memo on your desk that says CSRs can not talk to Parts.

The most frustrating part of being a CSR at the outsource center is when you call up the customer a few days later and no, they haven’t gotten the part you promised them they’d get and then you get your ear chewed off.

8: I just wish I could give you the “stupid customer stories” because some of them are hilarious. Others are hair pulling. There’s the one customer who used an HP printer from Eastern European country and plugged it straight into an American electrical socket and the magic blue smoke came out. Then there’s a customer who thought that printing cardboard was a good idea because the sales guy told them so.

9: In training our trainer said that if it takes longer than 30 minutes to troubleshoot (low end printer) we are then costing HP money and should just replace it.

— BEN POPKEN

Previously: 14 Hewlett-Packard Company Secrets From A Former Employee

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