Hewlett Packard vs Washington Mutual

And so I have I am having a problem with HP (Hewlett Packard) and I call them in to get repairs. Turns out that the product is no longer under warranty. Okay. I know that from the last time I had an issue. So what I need to know is how to go about getting it fixed.

I finally succumb to allowing them to ream me and overcharge me for repair and they do a pretty quick job of getting everything back to me. Simple enough. But what I notice on my bank statement is that I have been charged for the repair twice. Whoa!

I started out calling HP on Saturday at 11:00am and was not done arguing my point until about 2:15pm. In all this time I was sent around the world and back, given about 6 different numbers to call. The last person I spoke to gave me a number to call and said that he was sorry that no one had told me before that the department I need to contact for my refund was closed until Monday. They aren’t open on the weekends at all. Okay. Whoa!

Anyway, Monday at 11:00am I call and get 3 more numbers until finally I get the department I need. This is 3 hours into the day as well. The thing is that the department that repairs doesn’t do billing so they can’t credit me back. But the department that does billing insists that I have to speak to the repair department because they made the error. It’s really the Keystone Cops at their best sprinkled with some who’s on first.

Finally after loosing my sh%$#t someone gives me a main number to call. The main number looked up my repair, but only showed one from 2006. After further investigation he showed that I was charged once and told me to inspect my bank statement in more detail because I was probably wrong about being billed twice. Whoa!

The corporate representative told me the only way he would credit me was if I faxed over my bank statement to him so that he could see the charge because their system only showed one charge for repair.

We move ahead and I tell him this is ludicrous and how I find it odd that I had to call India to get his number and now he is asking for my bank statement. I was a few seconds from just calling my bank and registering the entire incident as a fraudulent use of my card and letting HP deal with collecting monies from me. But the problem there is that I would have to change my card in all my records where I have drafts set up and it world take 5 days to get a new bank card.

So I printed the item detail and headed out in the 40 degree weather to send a fax for $6.25 to this dude.

He got the fax. He never called back. An hour later I called him. He didn’t answer. Someone else took the call and said that even though there were clearly two separate transacts ions they weren’t’ going to refund me because they still only showed one linked to my credit card in their system. He told me that my bank made a mistake – not HP.

So basically 6 hours on the phone with HP, a walk in the cold weather and an additional $6.25 brought me no resolution. Back to the drawing board and contacting my bank.

Turns out after waiting on the phone for 2 separate calls (first one got disconnected when the representative put me on hold after I got through) for a total of one hour and fifteen minutes all I needed to do was tell my bank and they would credit me and go get the monies from the merchant. So contrary to what the nice young woman at the Washington Mutual call center in the Philippines had told me my card would not be cancelled. It was a dispute and not fraud. WAMU would just settle up with HP and I could go on my way.

All of this is important to me for several reasons. In the process of all this calling I spoke with people in call centers as far away as the Philippines and India. I also have the equivalent of tennis elbow on my fingers from all the automated buttons I have to push. My ear is like a boxer with that cauliflower ear from having my phone pressed against my face. All of this is because some politicians who campaign each year about how they care about Americans and the middle-Americas saw it fit to save their bottom-line a bit by outsourcing to call centers in other countries.

Now I am not a xenophobe or crazy American patriot by any stretch. I just say that if you are shipping jobs overseas you are not only shitting on the people who live here and need work, but you are also exploiting those other countries. So to Senator so and so I say screw you and your big house and your Ivy League-educated children. The rest of us are trying to get by and going at each other’s throats and micromanaging our bank accounts for fear or losing a nickel here or there while our pockets stay fact to save a buck in the name of a “global economy.”

Funniest thing in it all is that when HP transferred me to another extension once I actually ended up talking to T-Mobile. So not only was I in India, but I was at a random clearinghouse for all these deep-pocketed corporations. But we keep laying people off because there is no money to be made. Our economy falters because no one has money to spend.

Universal in Interscope are cutting employees daily. If they sold a better product (music) and kept people employed (workers) our economy would be just fine. But if you sell a crappy product you can’t complain when people don’t buy it.

HP has given me a new warranty that lasts 90 days. Just like the last one that broke on the 91st day. Welcome to the American Dream.

Saturday I vowed to never purchase another HP product again. And I may start keeping my money under my mattress.