Never let them tell you no, especially when you know they do not care.

Never let them tell you no. Although my husband may disagree with what I’m about to say, that’s his prerogative, but I think of myself as a pretty easy-going and mostly unfazed person. It takes a lot to rile me up. Like most people, I suppose, I do get my knickers into a twist when I’m dealing with unethical behavior, injustice or discrimination. But lousy customer service, hey, I live in California, so I’ve pretty much comes to terms with the fact that we have too many people to serve and underpaid / untrained staff to adequately serve consumers.

In my own business, for example, keeping my clients happy and content is my foremost concern. But larger corporations seem to have lost that intimate touch with the consumer. Well, you see some companies putting more emphasis on making that good first impression by changing the name of their receptionists. They now call them Directors of First Impressions. I wish only they would consider the same service after the fact such as when a customer calls for assistance after purchasing a product. I’m thinking they should change the name of customer service reps to Director of Last Impressions. Because how a customer is treated after the sale is just about as important as the service one receives before the sale, but I’m getting ahead of myself and need to address why I say never let them tell you no.

Years ago I bought a printer for about $300. The supplies, on the other hand, cost about $600 a pop, which amount to four color cartridges and an imaging drum. My printer was humming along nicely until it wasn’t. It sort of sounded like the printer was about to throw a bearing or maybe explode on the spot. What the heck, I kept buying supplies and keeping my fingers crossed it would keep chugging along.

Wouldn’t you know it — the morning I was scheduled to leave on a trip to Austin for an About.com conference — the printer stopped working. I couldn’t even print my boarding pass. It simply refused to print. Thumbed its nose. It cycled through all the lights, moaned and tried to spit forth a document but seemed, well, constipated. I asked my husband to take it apart while I was out of town to see if he could find an object, maybe cat food bits or plant debris, the normal things that fly around my desk, stuck inside.

His prognosis to me later by email was the printer had died a quick and pain-free death. OK, says I, then please buy me a new laserjet because I knew once I returned home, I’d have to hit the streets running taking care of my Sacramento real estate clients. I wouldn’t have time to drive to Office Depot to buy a new printer, dispose of my old one, hook up the new printer and spend several hours reading instruction manuals written in broken English.

My husband is a saint. He performed as requested, and I was delighted to find my new printer already in place and ready to rock-and-roll when I got home.

But then I remembered that I had four cartridges and an imaging drum sitting in their respective unopened boxes in my closet. So, I called HP to order new supplies for my new printer and asked them to pick up and refund the cost of my old supplies. Seemed like a reasonable and logical thing to do, right?

HP: No, you cannot return your supplies. They were purchased more than 21 days ago.

ME: But, you see, it’s not my fault your printer up and died on me. I bought a new printer from you plus more supplies today.

HP: Sorry, you can’t return the old supplies. It’s our policy.

OK, never let them tell you no.

ME: I’m hearing the word no from you, and that is not the word I want to hear. I want to hear that you care enough to make your customers happy. Right now, I am not happy. I would describe myself as an unhappy customer.

HP: We’re still saying no. But you could sell them on Cragislist. Or eBay. Even if I wanted to refund your money, my computer won’t let me input the return.

(I really liked that reason. It’s the computer’s fault. Hey, never let them tell you no.)

ME: What I hear you saying is, Elizabeth, you were a dummy to buy a new HP printer. You should have gone to XEROX instead. I’m also hearing you say that I should buy supplies for my new HP printer from your competitors, companies that also charge less than HP charges; is that right? You’re telling me that you do not want me for a customer any more, right?  Maybe I should talk to your supervisor.

HP: My supervisor will tell you no, too. (Well, put the supervisor on the phone.)

HP SUPERVISOR: No, we cannot refund nor take back your supplies. Look at this way, if you bought a new Mercedes that the dealer filled with gas and, say, it broke down on the road. If you took it back to the Mercedes dealer and asked for a refund on the gas, Mercedes would refuse. This is no different.

ME: That’s where your logical is flawed. Mercedes WOULD refund the cost of the gas because that’s the way Mercedes works. They also give me free car washes and anywhere in the world my car breaks down, Mercedes is there at no charge to me to tow it and fix it. Mercedes believes in customer service, which it appears, HP does not.  I need to speak to a person at HP who will refund my money. Who would that be, because it’s obviously not you, and I don’t want to waste any more of your time.

After being transferred to a dozen different individuals, all of whom repeated the HP mantra of NO, I was finally connected to a case manager. I explained my situation and guess what? HP does refund the cost of supplies. If this happens to you, here is what you do:

• Locate the serial number of your old printer, you will need it
• Call technical support
• Ask to speak to a case manager. Nobody else. Just the case manager.

From now on, I am not buying printer supplies more than one day in advance from HP. And I suggest you don’t stock up on supplies from HP either.

But don’t ever be a person who accepts “no” as an answer when you feel you are being treated unfairly. Never let them tell you no.