Let Me Google That For You

If you read much of any of my blogs you know I am REALLY big on customer service. I am quick to criticize a company and I like to also be quick to praise.

Practically ever since I started my Facebook, over a year ago, my personal comments box has said "Google is your friend". One of my biggest pet peeves has always been when people have a knee jerk reaction and spread stuff they know nothing about. It's stupid, for one thing. For another it often ends up hurting others, whether companies (but hey, they can handle it right? Those greedy corporations don't deserve any consideration!) or individuals (they must have done something to deserve it!).

Whenever someone posts or says something that is not directly from the source I like to take a couple of minutes to check it out. Surely we all have a couple of extra minutes to do this. We're sitting on our butts in front of the computer screen anyway, yeah? Are we really THAT lazy?! It's really easy. Look! Here I will demonstrate how to Google the incident which set off this post:

Let me Google that for you.

I will even save you the few minutes it will take to go through those links by 'splaining the situation to you.

Soldier has broken printer.

Now, it's important to me to note that I do fully support our troops, whether deployed or not, whether or not I approve of the politics behind what they're doing. They are defending our country and doing what the Commander-in-Chief has told them to do. I have no beef with them whatsoever. That said:

Clearly it is his personal printer or Uncle Sam would be paying for the repair, yes?

Clearly it is out of warranty as he is going to be charged for tech support. Are you still with me?

Clearly he expects preferential treatment because he is a deployed soldier... I am not going to get into that side of it, whether he should receive such treatment or not, as that is not the point of this post. But we really don't even know, without hearing the phone call, whether he told them he was a deployed soldier or asked to speak to a superior or anything like that.

So he shoots the printer, makes the video, yada yada. The video gets posted on my Facebook today. It spreads like wildfire, from one friend's page to the next. I think it's on my own newsfeed 6 times...probably more now while I'm typing this. The clear implication is that it's fresh and recent. That seems to be the assumption of those who comment on it, too, with anger and determined to NEVER.BUY.ANYTHING.FROM.HP.EVER.EVER.AGAIN!!!!!!!! as seen on the HP page itself.

Here are just a few things I found when I took a moment to use my dear friend Google.

A forum post


Note the date this video was posted.

Compared to the date this was posted.


A note from an HP person.

Well looky here. This very same video was featured on an episode of 20/20....wow look at the date!

And finally, here is the official policy of HP towards our military. Of course it doesn't say when they started the policy, but it's there now.

According to this it seems it was instituted after the video (although it doesn't say for sure).

People, please....stop and think before you jump on the bandwagon. We're not sheep. Use some common sense. Learn to use Google, or other search engine of your choice, or at the very least resolve to hear more of the story before you pass judgment.