this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2026
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296
HP realizes that mandatory 15-minute support call wait times isn’t good support (arstechnica.com)
submitted 23 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) by criss_cross@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
67 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

EDIT: This happened back in 2025. Will leave as I’m sure I’m not the only one that didn’t know, but I saw it on hacker news and didn’t realize it was a year old. My bad.

In an odd approach to trying to improve customer tech support, HP allegedly implemented mandatory, 15-minute wait times for people calling the vendor for help with their computers and printers in certain geographies.

Callers from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Ireland, and Italy were met with the forced holding periods, The Register reported on Thursday. The publication cited internal communications it saw from February 18 that reportedly said the wait times aimed to “influence customers to increase their adoption of digital self-solve, as a faster way to address their support question. This involves inserting a message of high call volumes, to expect a delay in connecting to an agent and offering digital self-solve solutions as an alternative.”

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[–] Opisek@piefed.blahaj.zone 69 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

I self-solved my HP problems by never buying from HP again. I love by Brother printer. Don't any of you dare quote stories about Brother enshittifying stuff in the replies (I will cry).

[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 16 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Brother has started selling printers that require an ink or toner subscription. I had to watch out for that last time I bought one.

Even if they get worse, I'm sure another brand will take their place.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 6 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

For me the solution is simply to just not own a printer. I can count on one hand the number of times I've had to print something in the last year. Anyway that's what parents are for, their house is where you store things you only occasionally want.

[–] 5too@lemmy.world 3 points 5 hours ago

But doctor... I am the parent.

Seriously, half the stuff that we print is coloring pages.

[–] criss_cross@lemmy.world 6 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Even if they did it’s nowhere near the level of HP