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.”
Yeah, I think most new PCs are also Copilot PCs with the branding and the button, if that’s what you mean. I don’t really mind that. I only use Windows at work, and we can’t use Copilot because it requires a personal Microslop account now, and we’re not allowed to sign in with one (only the corporate Intranet account). I think some people do anyway; to me, it’s as bad as using Facebook/whatever social at work, because IT can see everything you do. And I have enough history with Microslop (Xbox as well) I don’t want to associate with my job. I leave my job at the door when I leave and I leave my personal/social life at the door when I go there.