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“Your call is important to us. Please hold.”

If your eyes just rolled toward the back of your head, you’re not alone. Just check out the tsunami of customer complaints about poor technical support at ConsumerAffairs.com. And, you’ll probably want to do this before—not after—you purchase your next notebook.

Last year, more notebooks were sold in the U.S. than desktop PCs, according to the research giant IDC. This year, make that more notebooks than desktops sold worldwide. No doubt this is partly a result of cut-throat price reductions, and the overwhelming popularity of low-cost netbooks. The implications of this phenomenon on technical support are simple: The more notebooks out there, the greater the demand for tech support services. And PC makers are finding that customers of inexpensive notebooks are expecting the same quality tech support as high-end customers. But, given the economies of scale, and the economy itself, something has to give.

Virtually no computer vendor—or retailer, for that matter—is immune from the wrath of users who have become intimately familiar with the Blue Screen of Death, and other PC foibles. But, it’s how manufacturers handle their customers’ hardware and software problems that ultimately determine their true reliability, and, you would think, future sales.

Try telling that to Dell or Hewlett-Packard. When Forrester Research asked nearly 4,600 consumers about their interactions with a variety of companies, PC manufacturers—with one exception—averaged poor to just barely okay. In its April 2009 report, Forrester calculated its customer experience index, based on the “usefulness, usability and enjoyability of their experiences.” With a score of 65 percent or less considered poor, Dell ranked lowest in consumer satisfaction with 58 percent. HP and its associated brand Compaq also received poor rankings of 64 and 63 percent, respectively. Gateway squeaked by at 66 percent. Apple was the lone vendor with a good 80 percent satisfaction rating.

Further corroborating this trend, more than 4,500 laptop owners who read Consumer Reports also held court regarding tech support. Apple claimed a gratifying reader score of 83 percent, with Dell at 60, and HP at 48. It is no coincidence that the sellers of the most laptops have the lowest marks for technical support—but that’s no excuse, either.

Last year, LAPTOP’s annual undercover review of technical support services saw remarkable overall improvement in Web and phone tech support. This year, we found a general decrease in service quality, with the lowest ratings going to, yes—you guessed it, Dell and HP; and the highest marks going to Apple (which also makes the most expensive notebooks). In addition to Dell, HP, and Apple, we checked in with seven other major PC vendors to evaluate (See “How We Tested”) their technical support prowess. Read on to learn how they fared.

Darth Wong wrote:Have you seen how cheap these guys try to sell their notebooks? I can buy a Dell Inspiron notebook from dell.ca with a 15.6" screen for $469 CDN, complete with OS. When you buy budget hardware, you get budget service. Nothing surprising or scandalous here.

Starglider wrote:Frankly considering how useless the first-line people tend to be (they're the ones who read from an on-screen script with zero understanding of the subject matter, and something like a six month staff turnover rate) I will be happy when this technology is deployed.

Uraniun235 wrote:I don't understand why they don't just make a flowchart based off of the same script that the phone staff uses, and then stick the flowchart on the support website.

Darth Wong wrote:Have you seen how cheap these guys try to sell their notebooks? I can buy a Dell Inspiron notebook from dell.ca with a 15.6" screen for $469 CDN, complete with OS. When you buy budget hardware, you get budget service. Nothing surprising or scandalous here.

Starglider wrote:and putting such a flowchart into a multi-choice phone menu system would be pretty tortous.

Vendetta wrote:
They've started giving them away with 3G data contracts here.

Lonestar wrote:

Vendetta wrote:
They've started giving them away with 3G data contracts here.

They do that here too, although in that case it's for netbooks(cue Stark) rather than "standard size" notebooks. The adverts semed to be geared towards idiots who think that "wireless netbooks=internet anywhere!" without mentioning the contract needed for the dongle that touches the cell phone network.

Slacker wrote:I've actually had fantastic service from HP for my laptop. Guess it's luck of the draw.

*edit*
Actually, now that I think about it I was able to bypass stage 1 really quickly by telling them I'd done all the things on their script and I knew it wasn't a stage 1 problem-the DC plug on my mobo burned out and they had to replace it. I got to the stage 2 guys in about three minutes and five minutes after that they were giving me an order number to depot it, so I guess it's a bit of knowing what you're dealing with too.

General Zod wrote:

Slacker wrote: The one time I had to use HP support their first level was horribly lackluster and not so bright. I had to deal with them via email and didn't think there would be many issues, but it seemed like they didn't understand English very well, which made communicating the problem difficult. Shipping the laptop off and receiving it back was a breeze when I finally got to that point but I have no desire to use HP's support again.

RThurmont wrote:I've never had a problem with Apple Support not properly addressing something, however, I bitterly resent the fact that for iPhone support, you are required to take it in to a Genius Bar (as opposed to their being full-featured phone support).

Mr Bean wrote: Except DW if you buy a 3,000 business laptop from them you get the same level of service as the $500 laptop you were speaking of, so that does not exactly follow. Dell does not sort you based on what computer you bought, just on if your a home, business or corporate customer calling. Same thing with HP. I can't speak for Apple because I've never pulled call center for them or work them with.