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From: mck@hp-ptp.HP.COM (Doug_McKenzie)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp
Subject: Re: HP Customer Support...
Message-ID: <1320019@hp-ptp.HP.COM>
Date: 28 Nov 89 20:14:38 GMT
References: <203@limbo.Intuitive.Com>
Organization: HP Pacific Technology Park - Sunnyvale, Ca.
Lines: 104

Dave, what are you saying?  It seems what you're suggesting is that HP
Support is terrible, the best in the business.  It's like after insulting
and accusing HP of almost malicious negligence, you feel apologetic?!?  I
think you should calm down.

> When I was an employee of HP, for example, I encountered literally hundreds
> of bugs, quirks, documentation errors, invalid behaviours, &c &c while 
> pushing the edges of the HP-UX operating system.  Each time I encountered
> one I submitted a defect via the internal Defect Tracking System like a
> good employee concerned with the quality of the end product.  NONE of them
> were ever resolved, and in fact it was almost traditional that "the owner"
> of the defect would assign it to someone else at least two or three times
> (each assignment having about a 5-6 week time lapse) and then it would 
> just vanish, or be returned "unable to duplicate" a year or two later.

You found "hundreds of bugs", "NONE of them were ever resolved"?  Are you
serious?  With this 0% fix rate, I suppose your inescapable conclusion is
that no bugs ever found in HP-UX by anyone, are ever fixed.

I don't deny that bugs have been reported, and not fixed.  Most of these
have to do with being found too late to make it into the "frozen" release.
Critical bugs found "at the last minute" ARE incorporated into the release,
but they must BE critical, because incorporating a fix means re-running the
fairly huge set of quality assurance tests all over again, and potentially
delaying a release.  Customers hate it when a release is delayed, just as
they hate it when they find bugs.  It's a matter of balancing timing with
the criticalness of the bug.

I wouldn't even deny that some bug fixes fail to make it into subsequent
releases.  Nobody's perfect, some bugs fall through holes.  I do deny that
it's common, much less "almost traditional ... [that] it would just vanish".
Being returned as "unable to duplicate" can mean many things -- a defect
submission of 10,000 lines with the comment "it doesn't work", a
customer-modified or other non-standard HP-UX, lack of adequate
configuration or other information in the submission, etc.  I think your
innuendo is that the bug "owner" is lazy, and this is VERY UNTRUE, in my
experience.

> Classic stories are those of my friends at HP Labs who submitted bugs in
> 1984 or 1985 and have only recently received a "bug closing report" that
> simply states "obsoleted by new release" when, ironically enough, they
> can go and duplicate the same bug in the most current OS release!

Maybe so.  Care to name a few (bugs, not friends :-)?

>                                                             Even the so-called
> show stopper bugs don't mean that HP immediately mobilizes all their forces
> and solves it ASAP.  I have heard of some sites that have been without use of
> their machines for many months while waiting for their SE, customer support
> engineer, assigned engineer, etc to actually FIX the problem and send them a
> patch or workaround.

Well, once again I can't deny that this ever happens, but I don't know of
any times that it has.  I do know that HP has on occassion sent a new
machine to a customer long before "many months" had passed, when the problem
couldn't be locally resolved.  Software fixes are usually much quicker to
resolve, because the problem can be emailed.  Everyone I know at HP
recognizes that months-long delays in fixing problems loses customers, and
is perhaps the worst way to run a business.

> It would be an interesting experiment for HP to sponsor the creation of a new
> newsgroup "comp.sys.hp.patches" (or a mailing list, BBS, or whatever) and then
> use that forum for the dissemination of SSB's, the infamous software status
> bulletins where theoretically us HP-UX customers are informed of problems
> and solutions in the current release of the operating system.

I agree about the patch BBS.  Why is the SSB "infamous"?

> The most depressing thing to me is that HP is indeed one of the top companies
> in the computer industry when it comes to customer support!  Further, in my
> opinion (and in the opinion of many others) HP makes the most solid and 
> reliable computer equipment in the industry too, including their OS and
> applications.

Thank you.  But I don't get how you can say this, after claiming that NONE of
the bugs you found was ever fixed.

> It's just "being best" isn't good enough.  It's a fast moving world out
> there and if AT&T can promise guaranteed 30 minute turnaround on problem
> reports called in, why can't HP promise less than 2 weeks? (*)

> (*) Actually, HP policy is a return call within 2 hours of the initial
>     problem report arriving at the Customer Support Center(s), but I
>     recall that the average time to resolve a problem is quite a bit
>     longer than the two hours...and when you consider the number of 
>     people that the customer probably has to get through (including 
>     their FE, SE, customer support, who then has to track down and
>     find the responsible engineer who has to fit it into their own
>     busy schedule), well, two weeks is probably generous...

I don't think a simple average tells the story.  If a company puts out
terrible documentation, more calls will be received asking simple how-to
questions.  I have NO knowledge of AT&T's policy, but I seriously doubt that
all problems can be RESOLVED within 30 minutes.  Sometimes, a customer can
call the (HP) Response Center, and receive an answer in 2 minutes.  Other
times, an HP support person may have to drive 150 miles to a customer site,
to investigate a problem.  It all depends.


Doug McKenzie              | This disclaimer is for legal purposes.  No
HP-UX Support              | statement here is meant to express HP policy.
mck@hpdstma.ptp.hp.com     | I don't speak for HP, only for myself.  I have
  or                       | no legal opinions.  There, that should do it.
hplabs!hpdstma!mck