Have you ever had to call a company’s technical support hotline for something that wasn’t working quite right and spent countless hours trying to resolve it with them? If so, did anything good ever come out of it? More than not, I usually dread calling any technical support hotline because all too often I find myself spending an incredible amount of time trying to fix it with them and frequently it never gets resolved. But ironically, I felt it was important to share some thankfulness about one of these experiences I had recently that surprisingly ended differently, one that was with me receiving a gift.
The experience I’m speaking of is with Hewlett Packard (HP). Back towards the end of October I purchased a new laser printer from them, which in all circumstances worked like a charm for all my needs, all except for one thing that is. It dealt with an option that was on the printer itself. Every laser printer these days usually has an operating system that keeps it running, kind of similar to how Windows runs a PC or Mac OS runs an Apple machine. For a laser printer, that operating system is known as firmware and occasionally has to be updated just like it does on a computer. Unfortunately, the option on my new printer to check for the firmware update kept giving me an error message every time I selected it, indicating that either I wasn’t connected to the internet or the service wasn’t available. This is what precipitated my initial call to HP technical support.
For the next month and a half after that first call, I would spend an incredible amount of time talking with HP’s level one support, level two support, and then an even higher level of support that I can’t quite remember what they were referred to as. In each case, countless hours were logged with a number of their employees diagnosing my entire setup at home, time and time and time again, each of them arriving at the same conclusion, that the problem wasn’t on my end, it was on theirs. Yet none of them were able to fix the problem either. Eventually, I grew so frustrated with their help that I placed an explanation of the issue on the HP support boards. It was then I began to see that many others out there were facing the same problem as I.
At some point I came to acceptance that the issue might never get resolved, but thankfully I did find a workaround. My life then moved on and I didn’t think much about it until one day just over a week ago, I received a call from an HP employee who was part of that high level of support I can’t remember what they were referred to as. He agreed that my technical issue may not be fixed any time soon or never at all, yet he did want to offer me something for all the trouble I went through. What was it? Replacement toner cartridges for each of the colors of my printer, which were black, cyan, magenta, and yellow, total value being over $250! I was shocked because I’ve never had any of my technical support issues end in something like this.
So in the end, I decided I needed to reevaluate the feelings I normally have had when I think about a technical support hotline. I guess good things really do come for those who wait patiently, especially when it comes to technical support from a company. Thus I must say I’m grateful to two HP’s right now in life. One being Hewlett Packard for the nice gift they gave me, and two for my Higher Power, who truly has been the one to foster my growing level of patience in life…
Peace, love, light and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson