I ordered a PC online from HP last night, as I had bought one for my mother and was quite happy with it. Well, after I ordered it, I realized immediately that it would not ship until November 10th, and I did not want to wait that long. So I started a journey to cancel the order.
Here is what it entailed:
1. I spent about 30 minutes going through the emails from HP and their website and found no specific information about how to stop the order before it was shipped — even though I had just ordered it minutes before. Note that after looking for another 20 minutes the next day I eventually figured that the website does address the problem — it says that it is probably impossible to do it, but if a mistake was made, they will try.
2. I eventually found a number that seemed right and called, after about 15 minutes of going back and forth with the guy on the phone and being left on hold, I was told I would have to call back the next day because I was "8 minutes too late," although I am not sure what I missed.
3. I called this morning and was on hold 20 minutes or so. Then I was told that I would have to talk to the supervisor. I was put on hold. The person came back and offered me $100 to not cancel, I declined and said that I didn’t want to order something from a company that made it so hard to cancel an order. I was put on hold again, and then a supervisor told me that he would have to call the factory to cancel the order. I was put on hold and waited for the confirmation, which eventually came through.
4. I also complained to the supervisor about the fact it was impossible to cancel the order online, there was unclear information about how to cancel it or that it was impossible to do so online, and that it was an incredibly complex process to cancel. His answer was that what HP did was INDUSTRY STANDARD. I am not joking.
I am very loyal to HP, the current scandal pains me because I’ve known so many lovely and smart people who have worked there. And as a faculty member in the Stanford School of Engineering, the generosity of Bill and Dave has made my life better in many ways — Packard donated the funds for the building I work in, and they each donated two other buildings, and the Packard Children’s Hospital was where my daughter Eve was born. I have met many lovely and caring people from that hospital. I also am a big fan of Mark Hurd, who I think has done a great job of implementing the merger (who knows if it was the right strategy, but he did a great job with the cards he was dealt) and cleaning up Carly’s mess in other ways. It is my hope that they get past this scandal and return to making the company even greater
BUT this excuse and the practice itself are bad business and represent failed logic. It also possibly a dishonest claim, as it easier to cancel orders for computers that are bought online elsewhere.
1. The justification that everyone else does it, so it is right, is irrational: Just because everyone else in an industry does something stupid, does that mean you should do it as well? You may recall the famous 1994 testimony to congress when 7 CEOs of major tobacco companies each stood up and asserted that they did not believe that nicotine was addictive — telling that lie was industry standard too!
2. As we’ve shown with both evidence and examples in The Knowing-Doing Gap and especially Hard Facts, mindless imitation of what has always been done in an industry or a company is one of the surest paths to destruction. And even great companies — and Dell and HP are still great companies in many ways — often do many stupid things. Think of the most successful people you know — many do unwise and destructive things, and they succeed despite themselves.
3. Breaking out of a dumb industry standard is how newcomers — or reformed old-timers — come to dominate an industry. Look at the iPod, Google (they were told that a technologically superior search engine wasn’t worth it, it was all marketing), and the Men’s Wearhouse.
4. This also reminds of AOL’s PR fiasco a few months back where they got in enormous trouble for arguing with and refusing to cooperate with a person who wanted to cancel his subscription (See Bad Behavior at AOL). The people at HP were very polite and never argued with me, but like at AOL, are just trapped in a bad system and are apparently trained to say dumb things. It also smells like one of those cases where, to hit short-term numbers, a company puts in place a system that can cause long-term damage to customer relationships — like AOL.
5. Finally, the supervisor’s claim that it was "industry standard" — which I infer means making it impossible to cancel the order online, making it unclear how to cancel it at all, and to use a time consuming and friction-filled process for cancelling it — turns out to be not quite the truth. At least if you define online sellers of computers as part of the same industry. It turns out that if I order an HP computer online from Amazon, and decide I want to cancel it before it is shipped, it is actually possible to do online, clearly explained, and easy to implement. Again, perhaps industry standard is a codeword for Dell. I would also add that this is yet another reason that I remain faithful to Amazon. They aren’t perfect, but they do seem to value customers and put us first.
I usually try to avoid personal rants on this blog, but there are too many lessons in this one. There are general lessons about how imitation can become a substitute for thinking, about the damage done by copying misguided competitors, and how training people to say really dumb things can be bad PR.
There are also specific lessons about things that HP needs to do: I urge them to more clearly explain "How to cancel your order before we ship it" and even eventually put in a path for "Cancelling your order online." Note the first change could be done in a day.
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