HP aggravates its failure rate

It's annoying enough when you suffer a high failure rate on the PCs you're getting from a vendor. But, as one reader has recently experienced with HP, what can be vastly more aggravating is when you can't get them to tell you the solution, even though they apparently know it.

"I have some news for you regarding HP that, on one level, really isn't news...but it's still pathetic," the reader wrote. "Ten

Since the reader had recommended her client purchase the HP systems, the problems she was having with HP support was a real embarrassment. "I finally got the case escalated to a 2nd level engineer. Level 2 told me that support had a documented problem with a bunch of SATA cables for hard drives in the DX2200s. How come they didn't have a HUGE broadcast advisory? Why are we left to discover this for ourselves? There's nothing in their public knowledgebase that I could find about. I've been troubleshooting hardware for long enough that I really don't need to be searching knowledgebases to find out why basic PC hardware doesn't work. They're clearly going for the cheapest components money can buy, and it shows."

When the reader was unable to get anyone at HP to explain what the known problem with the cable was or how it could be fixed, that made an already bad situation worse. "I pointed out the high failure rate, gathered the list of serial numbers, and HP has been unresponsive. They told me they'd get an engineer on it who would determine what went wrong. I don't CARE what went wrong. I want HP to fix it, and I want my client to feel like they haven't been ripped off. I don't anticipate HP will come up with anything that'll make my client feel good about their HP investment. I was the one who brought HP in the door, so now *I* look bad. I really can't afford that, and I'm going to every channel I can."

The reader is quite persistent, and at last word she had succeeded in getting HP to send another onsite technician who seemed a bit more helpful. But she's not sure what they can do now to make her client feel happy about their HP investment. "What I'd to hear them say is 'We goofed. We're sorry. Next time we ship a product that could ruin users' data, we will make it public, and we'll take it upon ourselves to contact the users and the resellers, and fix it proactively.' Now, that'll never happen, but we'll see how close they can come. Of course, what I'm really upset about is the 25 percent failure rate. The HP SMB Sales center told me that they have other angry resellers yelling about high failure rates with the DX2200, so I'm not alone on this one. But the part that amazes me is that they've acknowledged they've done nothing to publicize a problem with their systems, one that they KNEW could cause data corruption."

Which vendor is aggravating you with its failure rate? Post your comments about your experiences below or write Ed Foster at Foster@gripe2ed.com.