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Generally my experience with HPe Warranties is overwhelmingly positive and I am consistently impressed with the quality of the local field techs.

I have a server that is failing to boot that I’d like to put into service and it is under 9-5 NBD warranty. Had a dispatch last week and the field tech thought he had identified the issue and sent me a replacement part which turned out to not be the solution. Now I’m trying to get a reply to my case for another dispatch. No reply yesterday from an email on Saturday, just sent another follow up today. Previously I had to follow up 2-3 times over several days to get a response.

So I’m looking for a friend at HPe to help me figure out what’s going on. I’d like to get this unit fixed this week and put in service so I can do some work this weekend. Case has been open since 11/28.

@priscilla-hp

6 Spice ups
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I hope you get the help you need, and on a side note I think the ads on the top and side of this topic are extremely well timed…

Buy HP and HP Elite gear!

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Not so much NBD as much as “when we f’ing feel like it” eh?

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If this was down hardware in production I’d be upset, but it’s going to be a replica of another server for redundancy. Overall I’m extremely satisfied with HPe, but I seem to have ended up with someone less motivated on the tier 1 support side. This is my first unsatisfactory experience with any area of their support and I’ve used them several times.

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Hello Justin, the situation you describe is very frustrating and unusual. We regret My scope is now HP Inc. and will remain your friend for HP Inc. inquiries. Even though he is the HPE vendor partner for HPE Storage, “our” friend at HPE is the knowledgeable and wonderfully customer focused and responsive HPEStorageGuy (Calvin Zito). I will tag and send him an email directing him to this post. You can also ping him or me (in case Calvin is traveling) with your HP case number. Thankfully, it is your first unsatisfactory experience which should be resolved soon.

@davison @calvin-hpe

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Thanks Priscilla, you’re on the ball as always making sure we get the best customer service. This is definitely a one off situation, I spend around $20k on HP warranties every year and I wouldn’t do that if they hadn’t provided me with the level of customer service I need to quickly resolve issues. I’ll shoot Calvin a PM.

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I’d also like to draw people’s attention to the great vendor relationships we have in the community. HP is not a small company and to follow up on my own would require a lot of phone time and red tape. In only a few hours most of which is time zone related I have Priscilla working to help me get sorted out. This is why I frequently give active vendors in the community a preference on purchasing decisions. When the inevitable issue occurs I have an additional support network to get back to good.

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Hi Justin - two things:

  • What is the server model (so I can hopefully engage the right team)
  • If you have a Case ID already open, please let me know that.

Thanks!

And as always, thanks Priscilla for alerting me.

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Hello again Justin, thanks for your quick response. I’ve also emailed Calvin at his HPE email address. And you know how much we have valued you as both an HPE and HPI customer and supporter over the years.

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Thanks Priscilla and Calvin. This isn’t a complaint, this is a one off oddity to resolve. I’m sure that the ProLiant line manager is also interested to know when someone is not meeting the standards that the rest of the company have set. If there are delays I can actually work around them in this situation, but I need better communication from the tech assigned to my case.

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Hello “our” friend Calvin, thanks for your amazingly quick reply. While I was typing the message above to Justin, I see that you had already responded ASAP to the alert. Exemplary. Justin, see, you’ve now found a new friend at HPE.

@calvin-hpe

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It’s good to know the right people :slight_smile:

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One piece of advice for any customer who isn’t getting the responsiveness they feel they should, you should call the Customer Support, give them your Case ID and ask to speak to the “Manager on Duty”. I’ve heard this works much of the time. So that’s the “magic phrase of the day”.

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Just as an FYI to the HPe people: I’ve been getting a few calls from HPe lately, asking me to look at solutions, etc. which is fine, but the calls come to me with the caller ID blocked. Meaning I see “unknown caller” on my phone. A blocked caller ID indicates to me that whoever is calling doesn’t want to be identified. It’s a sign of a disreputable caller trying to get someone to answer by anonymizing their call. Frankly it’s a tactic that I think is beneath the dignity of a company division like HPe. It makes me wonder what kind of decision making went into that choice. Anyway, I’ll almost always just decline to take calls from callers who block their ID. Just letting you know.

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That would actually be a problem as I do not answer any calls with Withheld CID.

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Did they identify who they were (company name)? Chances are good you signed up for something (contest, attended webcast) and you got added to a tele-sales list hoping that you’ll be a customer some day. I agree - this kind of thing shouldn’t happen. If you can tell me who it was, I can talk to the team that manages that stuff and suggest the company acting on behalf of HPE doesn’t do it in stealth mode.

And I agree with Justin - I personally don’t answer any call unless I know the number. Obviously not everyone can do that. Occasionally, I’ll answer and won’t say anything - if it’s an auto-dialer, no one will be there unless you say something.

Anyway, feel free to PM me any details that will help me attempt to resolve this.

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Thanks, I’ll get a name next time.

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I just wanted to close the loop on this. Had onsite service today and Steve, the field tech called me to confirm time, solved a weird order of operations issue with my SAS-expander and cache module that had locked my RAID controller and did some niceties in cable cleanup. We had a good chat and it looks like there were some weird issues from the initial request on my case including mixing two companies. Apparently this post is also making the rounds.

I’m all sorted out and am still impressed with the quality of technicians I deal with. This was my first issue of any kind with HPe support and once we got dispatching sorted out the rest of the experience was extremely high quality. As a customer I like knowing that the techs who will show up to solve my issue are going to consistently go above and beyond. If there are back office problems to solve I hope this discussion draws some attention to them so that they can be fixed.

My real message to HPe is that if you are going to set the quality standard as high as you do in the field, you need to have the same level of care in the call center and dispatch systems.

2 Spice ups