[Resolved]  HP — When Brands Deceive!

I am instigated to write this note because of the ill-treatment from HP, one of the foremost brands in Indian Laptop market. It was one and half years back and exactly on June19 2006, I bought a Laptop from HP. The purchase cost for HP Pavilion dv8216TX was Rs 82,000/-. HP offered only one year service for such a cost. Since the laptops could not be serviced locally like PCs, I extended the warranty period for 2 more years by paying Rs 8,000/- to make sure the service facility.

Problems started in September 2007. Firstly, it was a line along the screen. Gradually, the number of lines increased as shown in the picture. I took the Laptop to one of the authorized service centres of HP at Thiruvananthapuram on September 26th, 2007. The solution was to replace the display panel since it was a hardware problem. Replacement was made in two weeks, but the new replacement also showed the same problem. After waiting for two more weeks for the next replacement, I contacted again on October 9th to HP Service Centre. They informed me to call HP Customer/Sales Service in Chennai but it was futile. Their only suggestion was to wait more. And the delay prolonged day by day. There was no real action from the part of HP, for the whole month of November.

In December I received an intimation from HP Customer/Sales Service, Chennai that the system could be replaced in full. But there was no further steps from HP's part for weeks together. And at last, after three long months, the new replacement laptop came. The new Laptop is much ahead in performance and features when compared to the one I was having earlier. But, as a professional I suffered a lot. Lot of projects got pending, I skipped a few projects, my goodwill got affected, I failed to keep my promises; and these things cant be resolved easily. There's big difference doing things in time and doing it very late. From my point of view, HP should have settled the issue with in a period of two weeks; one month to the extreme.

The HP Chennai behaved to the customer(me) in such poor ways that not to lift phones, avoid me by telling some lame excuses whenever they attend my calls or not to reply my mails etc. Note that this heinous attitude is occurred from the staff of a brand like HP which claims great tradition and quality in computer hardware manufacturing, sales and service.

I published an article regarding this issue in my personal blog as well. [http://grahanam.blogspot.com/2008/01/when-brands-deceive.html]
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