Don't keep us in suspense...which one did you buy?
I've got one better. I had a customer with a HP Scanjet sheet-fed scanner, who went throught having it replaced. The replacement scanner developed the same issue after about a month.
HP replaced the scanner with a higher capacity unit, 2 models up, for no additional charge.
Now that's customer service.
Chris, you've heard my problems with RoadRunner a few weeks ago where I kept talking to Indians or Pakis and getting nowhere for almost 24 hours. Since that time I've talked to Direct TV, AT&T, and Blizzard (WoW). Every one of them had tech reps in the United States or Canada. The Blizzard kid, he sounded about 20, was in San Diego. Wonder what would happen if everyone refused to talk to foreign tech support idiots.
That's one heck of an endorsement from a satisfied customer. Now if all the other companies would get on board.
My name's Jeff, I wonder what'd happen if I started answering my work phone, "Hello, my name is Rajesh, how may I help you?"
That tracks with my experience at my old job supporting corporate printers. We worked with some good folks out in Idaho Falls.
If I had already walked the user through troubleshooting, they'd take my word on it and not have the user do anything else unless they had something I hadn't tried.
If they thought it would get the user working faster than waiting for a new box or tech to show up on site, they'd spend whatever time it took to try it.
If not, ship out a new box/schedule a service call, here's your case number, can I help with anything else, have a nice day.
My home printers are both HP and will stay that way for anything I actually buy (I have lots of hand-me-down equipment and free beats brand loyalty. If it gives me excessive trouble I just trash it).
My experiences with HP have been entirely opposite; never in any call to them have I spoken to anyone from this country, and never have I had a single issue actually resolved by calling their support. They're among the worst in the business, from my POV - and I'll never buy anything from them again simply because I know I will never have anywhere to turn if something goes wrong.
I'd had terrible luck with HP. My ZE5470 Pavillion laptop is a piece of crap that constantly overheats.
I have found HP laptop support to be quite poor; and as I said, their desktop support has become worsde and worse.
I specifically noted this in the text.
What they do a great job with, is the printers and scanners.
Sure, just don't try to order a memory upgrade for that network printer. Did you see the story the other day about the guy who bought one for $499, and HP wanted a 256MB DIMM (standard DDR2) for $599? He bought some Kingston RAM, and the printer died.
I heard that Carly was escorted around by armed guards... on HP corporate property!
Minor correction. HP is number 1 in printers, PCs and Servers world wide.
News out today is that HP is building two massive customer service centers in the States.
Rod,
roadrunner has call centers in canada... mostly new london... they do however have a LOT of employees that have thick asian accents, so its easy to assume that they are overseas... but after working for them for 4 years, i can tell you for sure that their call centers are in canada...
as for HP, they are the best for a reason... i used to work for Lexmark and i can tell you for sure that the whole 'script' thing you talk about would have happened exactly that way if you had called us... it wasnt that we didnt care, but we were required to do certain things...
I believe the real reason for the "Americanized Support Name" is not to make you feel better, but so that people with Southern accents or Baahstaan taaahk don't have to try and say "Rajesh".
I like my HP printer (2550n, I think) quite a bit, though I do wish Apple still made printers.
I had a Personal LaserWriter NT for something like 12 years before it finally died.
I had a HP PDA running Windows Pocket PC or whatever the MS PDA OS was at the time. One time when I put in an SD card (like I had done several times before) the thing did a hard reset. Then I noticed the top was a bit warm. Then I noticed a funny smell. When I removed the card, I saw a little hole in the plastic - the thing melted a hole right through the plastic case of the SD card! After several tech support calls they concluded that it was out of the 1 year warranty (which it wasn't) and even if it was in warranty, they wouldn't do anything because it involved third party hardware. I swore off HP after that and have had great luck with Brother printers! Glad someone has had good luck with HP!
I've had similar experiences to your's with Canon, actually. I've dealt with a number of $500ish network printers from them, and the one time I had to call support, I was most pleased: the guy I spoke with was new, and fully admitted he didn't know the ins-and-outs yet, and put me on the phone with someone who could help me. That other person had a solution for my problem in under 15 minutes, and didn't treat me like a half-wit. And yes, they both spoke English, natively.
I didn't have to deal with those Canons long enough to know whether they'll have HP-style longevity, but my expectations are high.
Re: HP printers, I agree with you that they're best of breed. Their primary strength is their design quality, though, not their support - though that's certainly nice, too. The ones I've had experience with will go through hundreds of thousands of pages more than a similarly priced - or even more expensive/faster/yet still feature-comparable - Dell or Xerox network printer before the fusers need replacement.
Oh, and Dell? They are the exact opposite of HP and Canon in almost every respect when it comes to printers. Support? What's that? Sitting on hold for over an hour, just to get a replacement part - which failed long before advertised MTBF, yet you still have to pay for - is unacceptable. And that's just for major parts, like fusers. It seems the "small parts" like gears, springs, and levers all break fairly quickly on Dells, too...
You know Dell shit is bad, when you find yourself throwing out recent-vintage Dell network printers alongside 15-year-old+ HP Laserjets, and the LJs are still more desirable than the Dells (as evidenced by the fact that, on the way past the dumpster on the way home, the Dells were still in the trash, but the similarly-sized LJ was missing).
And finally, of the half dozen Dell color lasers I've had to deal with, the amount of toner waste has been atrocious. Open them up, and there's literally a pile of toner sitting in and amongst the moving parts. That shit is expensive (especially when people use such printers as their personal photo development center), and such waste is completely unacceptable.
I can't help but think that Dell's printer market is an afterthought - a crude placeholder until they decide to actually get serious.
"...and he was a native English speaker, talking to me from Portland."
You are bending the bounds of credulity here.
Sorry that I didn't specify; my problem specifically relates to their printers and printer combos. I always build my own systems and only buy Thinkpad laptops 
HP could have ruled, but they made some very bad decisions from 2002 to 2005
Why HP went downhill...
When they bought Compaq they had Compaq take over the engineering and start producing their laptops and desktops, and Compaq was never really known for quality, outside of the higher-end server side and the hand-held side. I was working there during the acquisition and we were all baffled at their decision to use us (Compaq). Even us guys at Compaq knew that we produced garbage when it came to desktops and laptops...
"News out today is that HP is building two massive customer service centers in the States."
Which probably partially explains why they're buying EDS.
Our big designjet plotters- the 44 inch ones, and the 24 inch ones, I don't think anyone else even MAKES. For D and E size prints, it's pretty much HP.
Desk printers? I have a Lexmark on my desk I paid $16 for. I refill the cartridge. The POS works for the tiny amount of printing I do, since I don't run a business out of the house like you. If I did, it would be somehting huge like a 5si.
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