After reading Mike Gunderloy's post about his experience with Compaq, I was inclined to post up here too.  His post talks about a horrible experience he had when trying to receive out of warrantee (read : paid) support for a handheld.  After reading this, I reflected back on some past customer non-service experiences I had.  The point of all of this being, who the hell CAN we buy from?

< These are some short excerpts. For example, my issue list with Dell in the past is MUCH longer>

About 2 years ago I had an IBM hard drive die.  Those who know me know I'm a big fan of IBM, especially my ThinkPad.  Dealing with them about my in warrantee harddrive had to have been the worst experience I ever had with a tech support company.  In the end, I was out of a drive for 3 months before I got a replacement drive, that died a couple weeks later.  I never RMA'd the last drive out of frustration, even though I was the loser.  Customer service didn't give two ***** about my issue, had no advanced replacement, and never even replied to most of my inquiries.

About a year ago I was working on a mail server for a client.  It was a Dell Poweredge.  I contacted Dell on a Thursday looking for pre-sales support on extending the raid array, and to order the parts for overnight delivery (for upgrading over the weekend).  After 3 weeks, and 3 errors on Dell's part, we finally got the drives.  Again, "paid" service, incompetent support staff, horrible service, and in the end all the client saw was it took 3 weeks.

I can say I've had no issues personally with HP/Compaq, but know plenty of people that have.  Hearing this just re-iterates the fact that no one really cares.

So my and co-workers experiences tell me not to deal with IBM, HP/Compaq, or Dell for hardware.  Hmm.. the 3 biggest players..

And the story goes on.  I have horror stories with Sprint (mobile), Verizon (Dedicated Circuit's), SBC (this is a long list), Comcast, etc, etc.  So as well as tangible items, even the companies selling services don't seem to listen or care.

Well, in either case, I contest that customer service, for the most part, should be considered a luxury now.  As unfortunate as it is, its not required to be successful anymore.  Can we as consumers do anything?  Not that I can think of.  What are you going to do, not use SBC?  You will end up just using someone that uses their lines anyway.  Not buy an HP/IBM server?  Well, poor support for good hardware is still better then good support for bad hardware.  So we are pigeon holed into decisions to use companies that don't care.  I would even go so far as to contest that in some industries, you have no options for choosing a well supported product (think of phone service, or even mobile phone service (although I have heard good things about Nextel)). 

Now, I do have one shining star in my limited experience.  Geico.  After switching to Geico last year (you all expected the rate joke didn't you?), I was so amazingly surprised when someone answered their customer service line.  ANSWERED IT.  No recordings, no menus, a real person.  And to my shock and awe, a competent person.  They were able to help, without yelling, without escalation, and best of all within a few minutes.  Excellent service, and this year I did not even shop for insurance even though my rates went up a little.  It was well worth the extra cost.

So maybe this thread will spark the opposite.  How about we try to make a list of companies that DO serve the customer.  It will be a MUCH shorter list, and I would be very interested to see other companies that may have half of the interest geico has in its customers.

Larkware Compaq Story
Last installment of Cory Smith's sprintPCS horror story that I am watching closey.

 By the way.  Being a .net developer I of course have to voice in on MS.  Besides my licensing for professional's gripe, which I contest would be customer service, MS's service has been very good to me.  I have used support on many issues both on the admin, and the coding side.  They have ALWAYS been responsive and competent.  No geico, but much better then most I have dealt with.