I'm trying to gauge the level of responsiveness from the HP "Response" Center and if I am the only person who is experiencing a very long delay in getting problems resolved.

Last Friday evening, we experienced a disk drive in the system volume set drop offline, probably because of a bad signal on the SCSI bus.  Naturally, all activity on the system eventually froze waiting for the errant ldev.  The only solution which proved successful was to cycle power on the entire system which removed the bad signal and allowed the system to reboot.

When I called the HP "Response" Center and worked my way through the "unable to boot your MPE system" path, I was placed on hold for over 30 minutes listening to "music on hold" and a much-repeated "please stay on the line and an engineer will be with you shortly".  Finally, after listening to this drivel for about 35 minutes, I pressed zero to get an operator who, unfortunately, received an earful of my wrath.  In fairness to all concerned, once I did reach the call coordinator, I did receive fairly quick action on my problem.

I find myself asking two questions at this point:  1) if I did not "zero out" to a call coordinator, how much longer would I have had to listen to music-on-hold WHILE MY SYSTEM WAS DEAD? and 2) am I the only customer experiencing this problem?  Judging from previous transactions with the "Response" Center, I am willing to bet that the above situation is a COMMON occurrence.  My original assumption was that HP installed the automated phone system to increase its responsiveness to its customers; my assumption now (and HP does nothing to counter this perception) is that the automated phone system is being used to place more DISTANCE between HP and its customers.  Am I wrong here?  Am I not seeing something I should be seeing or reading too much into the equation??

Comments welcomed!!

Tom Madigan
HP Systems Manager
International Communications Research, Inc.
605 West State Street
Media, PA  19063-2620
Email:  [log in to unmask]

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