In defence of HP's notebook support

Dear Sir,

I happen to have intimate knowledge of the replacement process at Hewlett Packard.

Let me begin by saying though, that the last thing HP want is a customer who's unhappy with their product. They even replace units (particularly laptops) for people when they have no objective fault at all, I policy which I happen to disagree with.

Legally, the purchasers deal is with their dealer or supplier, not with the manufacturer, and replacement should be sought from them not HP, except for within the first 30 days after purchase. Thats about it! The story is different with say, Dell; who sell direct to the public; HP don't as a rule.

If you bought a washing machine at Comet and you had problems you'd expect Comet to give you another one, but expectations seem to be all mixed up when it comes to the high-volume computer market.

And yet HP are still, after nearly a year in Aengus' case, willing to replace the unit for him with an upgrade, even though he has no apparent legal right to it. What's more, here he is whining about HP and moaning about their service policies in public, and that's after he's had his cake and eaten it!

Many customers make their own problems (particularly corporates) when the first thing they do is wheel out and install a half tested or untested image on perfectly good new HP products; images often not even designed for the new products. I'm referring here to large companies who should know better. The next thing that happens is that they're on the phone saying that the units are behaving in an unexpected way, and how bad HP products are!

HP go to a lot of trouble and expense to provide fully functioning and stable s/ware images on their recovery CD's, included in the purchase price, which many customers then promptly loose or abandon entirely in favour of some flakey build from their own "IT personnel".

I'm the first to admit that in a market which puts price and gimmicks above all else (for the sake of beating the competiton to a sale), quality will suffer, and there will be the odd unit which arrives with a problem.

This is an industry which, largely speaking, no longer "makes" anything itself, and typically hasn't for years. It's surely not news that everything is now farmed out to dirt cheap far eastern manufacturers, and this goes for HP as much as anyone else. Consequently we see huge job losses in the northwestern hemisphere computer industry, and things like HP buying Compaq simply to get market share in the high volume space AND remove a competitor.... and those ARE the reasons, don't be deluded into thinking that its anything more grand than that.

Many people would be unaware that there are probably now only about 3 or 4 laptop manufacturers in the whole world. Ignore name badges, we're all buying from the same sources (eg Compal). The only difference between HP and say, Dell, is that Dell take a look at them and say, "Right, build us 250,000 of those and we'll get them straight to market." Whereas HP say, "OK, lets take a few back to HP Labs and we'll play about with them for a few weeks and make some recommendations for change, prior to going to market."

Its correct to say that profit margins, certainly on PC's, became almost 0% back in about 1995, and have simply continued to get worse ever since. Partly because of price competition and partly because of the increased after sales expectations of the customer they are now little more than "Loss Leaders".

The whole point is that against an ever worsening backdrop to the industry a company like HP still endevour much harder than most people realise to please the Aengus's of this world, even though this type can never be satisfied.

Regards,

Phillip D.

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