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Nov. 3rd, 2005 06:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogHow HP earned my wrath:
My company ordered 50 special configuration laptops from HP, who we are supposedly involved in a 'strategic relationship' with, whatever that may mean. To me that sounds more like something one might become involved in at a con when you've slept with someone's girlfriend(s)/boyfriend(s) without being aware of said person rather than something to do with a hardware supplier, but anyway...
These fifty laptops, that are supposedly their new product line that they're going to be producing huge quantities of, were delayed multiple times because of production difficulties. This is perhaps a little understandable as these were of a special hardware configuration with an SKU number that was just for my company. We were told on three separate occasions that the hardware had shipped, only to find out later that it had not. Two months late, it finally arrived.
Now a month later, I am again getting low on stock for systems to build for new hires. Having sent an email to purchasing to find out what the deal is, I was told, and I quote from the email I forwarded to my home account for just that purpose:
So after investing the time to get our own special config set up and being lied to and jerked around on multiple occasions, we have now lost our account rep and no one will return our emails. From everything I've seen over my time at this company, this is pretty typical of them. My supervisor has said on multiple occasions that he wishes we could still use Dell hardware. It was more reliable and they seemed to actually be interested in providing some level of customer service. Of course, I could be just as verbose about the inscrutability of the Microsoft software licensing system, but I think that will be left for another entry.
That's not what's been stressing me at work. That's actually darkly amusing to me. The stress is coming from the fact that the call/incident volume seems, without having actually attempted to analyze it, to have nearly doubled this week. Monday and Tuesday I kept waiting for the volume to die down so I could catch up. Now I'm just hoping to be somewhere within sight of breaking even before the end of tomorrow. It remains to be seen whether that will occur.
On the bright side: free pizza for lunch today. There's always a bright side, right?
My company ordered 50 special configuration laptops from HP, who we are supposedly involved in a 'strategic relationship' with, whatever that may mean. To me that sounds more like something one might become involved in at a con when you've slept with someone's girlfriend(s)/boyfriend(s) without being aware of said person rather than something to do with a hardware supplier, but anyway...
These fifty laptops, that are supposedly their new product line that they're going to be producing huge quantities of, were delayed multiple times because of production difficulties. This is perhaps a little understandable as these were of a special hardware configuration with an SKU number that was just for my company. We were told on three separate occasions that the hardware had shipped, only to find out later that it had not. Two months late, it finally arrived.
Now a month later, I am again getting low on stock for systems to build for new hires. Having sent an email to purchasing to find out what the deal is, I was told, and I quote from the email I forwarded to my home account for just that purpose:
Update on the HP relationship.
After getting emails from our account rep on Monday afternoon regarding quotes she was going to send out, I lost all contact. Repeated attempts via email resulted in the typical blackhole response so I picked up the telephone and called.
HP has gone through a reorganization. I have no idea what has happened to {our up-till-now account rep with HP} and I do not know what the status is on our special configurations. We have a new Rep, {name} and I am waiting for him to call me back. At that point I hope to learn more about our go forward relationship.
(at risk of paying a little bit more, I am voting that we use either CDW or Insight again for our HP buying.) This may mean that we have to reevaluate the special configurations that we have going.
So after investing the time to get our own special config set up and being lied to and jerked around on multiple occasions, we have now lost our account rep and no one will return our emails. From everything I've seen over my time at this company, this is pretty typical of them. My supervisor has said on multiple occasions that he wishes we could still use Dell hardware. It was more reliable and they seemed to actually be interested in providing some level of customer service. Of course, I could be just as verbose about the inscrutability of the Microsoft software licensing system, but I think that will be left for another entry.
That's not what's been stressing me at work. That's actually darkly amusing to me. The stress is coming from the fact that the call/incident volume seems, without having actually attempted to analyze it, to have nearly doubled this week. Monday and Tuesday I kept waiting for the volume to die down so I could catch up. Now I'm just hoping to be somewhere within sight of breaking even before the end of tomorrow. It remains to be seen whether that will occur.
On the bright side: free pizza for lunch today. There's always a bright side, right?
