The Mayflower Hotel Nottingham can't bring itself to give a fuck at the moment.

My lovely boy bought me an HP Photosmart 330 Printer for Christmas. It's fabulous - it prints beautiful photos, and is generally a lovely thing.

Except I had to install a few hundred megabytes of imaging software on to my PC in order to use it; there are two processes running in my taskbar now, and frankly the software is... well, it's not as elegant as it could be.

I'm a really proficient Photoshop user; I learnt on photoshop 3, back when you set it to run a filter then went off for a cuppa and a fag to let it do it's thing. So, really, all I need from my printing software are a bunch of standard drivers that integrate into windows nicely.

So, yeah, a couple of hundred MB of cruft on my machine, plus the chance to sign up for 'Extended Features' (um, that seems to be lots and lots of special offers, plus software that reports your usage back to HP... Great) isn't quite what I was looking for.

So, anyway. I sent their customer service department an email asking if there was a way to install just the essential drivers without the huge imaging suite.

Here, ladies and gentlemen, is the response I received within sixteen minutes of logging the ticket with HP. That's sixteen minutes of 'massive research on the issue', in case you don't pick that up.

Dear Kim,

Thank you for contacting HP Total Care.

I understand that is there any other way to install just a limited set of drivers for imaging software.

I first appreciate your time for providing us an opportunity to serve you. However,I assure you that there is no need for any concern and I shall be glad to provide you complete assistance.

After massive research on the issue, I am sorry to say that there is no other possible way to install the limited software.
As, all the software program for the drivers is linked with one another.

I am sure this should resolve the issue. However, please reply to this message with the results if it persists. We shall be glad in assisting you further with it.



Sincerely,

HP Total Care.

Dear HP Total Care. Not only are you the patronising face of a company who makes second rate imaging software, but also, your grammar is incomprehensible.

Tomorrow, if I can summon the energy, I'll post customer service emails from the three other companies I'm bashing my head against; including, for your edification, the 'No, we think that book is not yet published, even though we sell it under a slightly different title and you clearly stated that you've seen it in the shops and provided ASIN numbers for both database entries' emails from Amazon, and if you're really lucky, the 'Oh, our updates are buggy. Can we suggest that you uninstall everything, then reinstall our updates one by one, then tell us when the error reoccurs so we can have a conversation with an engineer to find out if this is a known issue, even though it's been reported all over the internet?' tickets from Sony VA customer services.

Is it me, or are the 'expert systems' just destroying these corporations' relationships with their customers?