Yesterday I came across an article on heise resale, a news service for IT resellers. It was the latest feature in their series “Caution, cutomer!” that made me wonder (again). Long story short: Someone buys an HP computer from a reseller with a 3-year warranty for HP service by the next working day, machine keeps freezing, HP call center screws up, HP technician arrives 3 days later and screws up, problem is fixed one week later after heise intervened.
Now I’m not surprised that the HP people screwed up by sticking to the manual. What I’m surprised about is that the reseller missed the opportunity to be remarkable and actually help their customer. Instead of saying “You know what, we will take care of this. We’ll give you a new machine with all your data transferred, sort this thing with HP and when it’s fixed, we’ll change it back” they just passed the buck to HP. Because they could. The customer has the service agreement with HP, not them, their thinking is.
WDIFY still has a long way to go.