typical bad technical support

I had the most infuriatingly bad technical support experience yesterday, with Hewlett-Packard. All I was trying to do was make my networked printer work with my new PC. Somewhere along the way in transferring stuff from the old to the new, Windows XP lost its printer settings. So I uninstalled the printer and the driver software, downloaded the new driver, and figured I could just install it and the printer would work! Well, of course nothing is that easy.

HP offers a big driver download of about 400 megabytes that includes the drivers and all the other bundled crappy software they give you on the CD. Or you can download just the basic device drivers. But, I found, that basic driver set, which is only about 40 megs, won’t work with networked printers. And, I also found that the big driver set won’t install on my PC. I spent a couple hours trying the workarounds HP has on their website, and nothing worked, so I decided to try their live online support option.

It pops up a little text chat window where you can get real time help. Supposedly. Here’s the dialog between me and “Victor”:

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Todd Bradley
hello

Victor
Thank you for contacting HP Total care. How may I help you today.

Todd Bradley
Hi, I’m trying to install an HP psc 2510 on a network. I’ve downloaded the latest driver software from the HP website.

Victor
Hello Todd.

Victor
Please elaborate the issue and I shall help you my level best.

Todd Bradley
I get an error on installation, which I have traced to the Memories Disc setup.

Todd Bradley
I followed the instructions on http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?product=303770&softwareitem=mp-23418-1&lang=en&cc=us&lc=en&dlc=en&os=228&docname=c00093927#Mem_disc

Todd Bradley
Specifically, after the software was uninstalled, I removed the HP and Hewlett-Packard registry entries.

Todd Bradley
Then I tried to do a manual installation of just the Memories Disc.

Victor
Alright.

Todd Bradley
But that gave me an Error 1935.

Todd Bradley
Here’s the information from the Event Viewer:

Todd Bradley
Product: Memories Disc Creator 2.0 — Error 1935.An error occurred during the installation of assembly ‘Microsoft.MSXML2,publicKeyToken=”6bd6b9abf345378f”,version=”4.1.0.0″,type=”win32″,processorArchitecture=”x86″‘. Please refer to Help and Support for more information. HRESULT: 0x80070002. assembly interface: IAssemblyCacheItem, function: Commit, component: {303994BA-6487-47AE-AF1D-7AF6088EEBDB}

Todd Bradley
But your support pages don’t have anything about Error 1935.

Todd Bradley
Ideally, I’d like to install only the necessary drivers to be able to use the printer on my network, without the Memories Disc software or any of that other stuff.

Todd Bradley
But the “minimal” driver setup doesn’t include network support.

Todd Bradley
Any suggestions?

Victor
Please allow me a moment.

Todd Bradley
standing by

Victor
Todd, I am sorry for the delay.

Victor
You have tried most of the steps. Please allow me a moment.

Todd Bradley
how are things coming along?

Todd Bradley
sorry to be impatient, but I need to go to work and I’ve been in your live chat for 20 minutes now

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Chat Transcript Ends Here

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Now, what this thing doesn’t show is the timestamps for the messages. That whole conversation took nearly half an hour! I’d type something, and about 5 minutes later, “Victor” would type back something like, “Please allow me a moment.” Then another 5 or 10 minutes would go by and I’d wonder if “Victor” was still awake, so I’d type something else. I don’t know if Victor was just asleep, or trying to service several customers at once, or really looking into what the problem was.

The funny thing is that after 25 minutes of “Victor” taking 5 or 10 minutes to write back to what I said, as soon as I typed that last comment about needing to go to work, he immediately disconnected the chat within 2 or 3 seconds. Basically, he just hung up on me!

The whole thing was worse that useless. Useless would’ve been no helpful information, but with HP’s online support system, I got no helpful information AND wasted a half hour of my time getting it! You can bet I won’t be using their live tech support chat option again.

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