Tales of tech terror

After my debacle attempting to replace my HP battery backup unit (the new one appears to be working fine, knock on wood), I received several emails from Cringesters with even more horrifying support stories – mostly HP or Dell sufferers. Here are four of the most chilling, slightly edited for clarity and length:

The BIOS From Beyond the Grave

K. T.’s tale of terror begins when he foolishly agreed to let HP automatically update the BIOS on his new Pavilion 7680n.

Within 30 seconds my PC froze and would not reboot again. I called HP Tech support (India) and got the typical runaround. They were polite, but said there was nothing they could do. I could have my PC shipped to a service center for a new BIOS chip and a hard drive reformat. I said “HELL NO.” After several hours of being transfered around the world to different support groups, I was finally able to escalate the situation to someone in Canada, who arranged to have a tech come to my location and replace my motherboard. Within three days someone showed up and installed a new motherboard in my PC. Every thing booted up fine. They never would say what caused that bad HP BIOS update, but I believe it was for Vista users. I’m running Windows XP!

Voice Menus of The Living Dead

When B. K. tried to get Dell to fix his dead hard drive, they sent him an SATA unit, not an IDE. So he called to correct the problem – and got bounced around more than a ping pong ball in a wind tunnel.

After going through four levels of phone menus, I got to someone in India who said I’d reached the wrong department. He transferred me to someone in small/medium business, who also said it was the wrong department and sent me to India again to someone who did not know the difference between IDE and SATA. He sent me to another phone menu that was five levels deep. After 15 minutes on hold I hung up, and later called the number he gave me. That menu transferred me to another menu for tech support which then sent me to customer service and after two more menus transferred me to a menu for higher education, which sent me to the tech support menu again. After being transferred to their service menu and going through two more levels of menus I selected what seemed to be the most likely choice and ended up back at  the phone number where I’d started.

The Desktop That Wasn’t There

Two months ago, D. Y. bought Compaq Presario V6000 laptop running Windows XP. Mysteriously, the desktop wouldn’t display if he created more than one user account.

After 18 emails and as many phone calls, HP’s only suggestion was to run the “restore to factory settings” program — killing off all the applications, firewall, virus checker, and data that I put on the laptop after getting it. HP refused to dispatch a technican to my home, a service I paid for in an extended service contract, on the grounds that restoring to factory settings does not require a tech. HP refused to escalate the issue to 2^nd tier support on same grounds, to identify whether any of the six dozen Microsoft patches to Windows XP SP2 I was forced to install after initializing Windows might be the culprit, or if anyone had ever called in with a similar problem.

Revenge of the Local Dealers

After having 15 Dell power supplies go dark in the space of a week, S. S. says he gave up on brand name manufacturers. As data administrator for a Michigan community college, he now buys all his machines – some 500 a year – from a local build-to-order shop:

I get exactly the specification that I want and at a very competitive price.  As I am their biggest customer, they bend over backwards to keep me happy.  If I have a problem of any kind, I have a direct support contact or I call the owner.  And, on the plus side, they speak English and are technically very competent. 

When the next batch of power supplies went belly up, he didn’t call Dell, he called his local PC maker, who sent out two techs with 24 units and replaced all of the original Dell power supplies for free. “Now, that’s service,” he says.

Got more tales of tech support terror? Post them below or email me. The truly terrifying may receive ghoulish gifts in return.