this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2026
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496
HP realizes that mandatory 15-minute support call wait times isn’t good support (arstechnica.com)
submitted 21 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) by criss_cross@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
66 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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[–] KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

Yeah ran into that a month or so back with some service or other. Account was locked out, I told the prompt I was looking for an account unlock, I got to listen to “you can do most things by logging into your account at” for 45 minutes.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 3 points 9 hours ago

Online banking does this all of the time. It's surprising how little you can actually do on their app, virtually every common banking task requires you to call them.

I had to call them to set up an automatic payment on my credit card from my savings account. Because I couldn't work out how to do it on the app. I confirmed with the support agent that you can't do it on the app.

[–] hateisreality@lemmy.world 8 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

I have found that if I yell or sound angry at the LLM prompt, I'll get an agent faster than if I am a proper adult

[–] KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

If you swear or use certain words/phrases/tones there are absolutely some that put you into a higher priority queue. There are also some that immediately kick you into that queue the moment you swear, bypassing any info gathering and such.

I’ve had to use it for things like Verizon which absolutely expects the LLM to be able to verify your account, but their account verification was broken. Swear at it a little and suddenly the account verification is no longer needed.

[–] hateisreality@lemmy.world 1 points 13 hours ago

Haven't found that one yet.... mostly it's either faster or just as shitty