HP Haunted by Quality Problems

When the whole world was focusing on Toyota’s recalls, the IT giant Hewlett-Packard (HP) was also trapped by increasing quality issues in China.

A battle between the Chinese consumers and a foreign company takes place in China.

A source from General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine of China (AQSIQ) said on March 14, 2010 that the department had received the lawsuit of a lawyer on behalf of 60 consumers against the quality problems of HP’s laptops. The AQSIQ attached great importance to this case and established a special team to investigate it.

What really provoked the customer was not the bad quality but the indifference HP displayed when confronting their complaints. More and more people joined in the team of maintaining their legal rights. They asked HP to recall all laptops with the problems of “blank screen, splash screen and overheated video card”.

Frequent Problems to Low-end Types

“There are problems with the heat radiation system of my HP laptop. The video card gets so hot after some time that it can be used to fry eggs. I am afraid that one day the machine will break down and even burn itself. I chose to buy this laptop because of HP’s fame and the fair price. I thought HP’s product would live up to their reputation, but I was wrong,” said an indignant consumer who spent 5,000 yuan (USD 732.46) on a V3-series laptop of HP.

“I come from Beijing. I bought this computer only two years ago and two significant parts of it have already been replaced. Last year I had to replace its mother board. When the period of maintenance expired, the display broke down and I had to buy a new one. What’s worse was that I had to spend another 1,000 yuan (USD 146.49) on a new display,” said another consumer.

A senior IT expert said: “HP, which took the biggest market share in the world, also enjoys a big market share in China. This company focuses on the low-end computers in China. However, it could not compete with Apple in innovation, with Sony in products appearance nor with Lenovo in localization. Therefore, HP had to depend on its international brand awareness and low prices to attract the consumers. But now problems arose. It is really surprising.”

“The HP laptops having problems all came out in 2007 or 2008. They were sold very well because of their great cost performance. These computers were always haunted by the problematic heat radiation system. Therefore, after one or two years, the problems arose frequently. HP admitted that there were problems but no remedies were used to solve them. When the owners sent the disfunctional computers to the service center, they were usually told that the main board should be replaced. If the maintenance period expired, replacing a main board will more or less cost 2,000 to 3,000 yuan (USD 292.98 to 439.48). In the foreign countries, HP recalled parts of problematic laptops. But such things didn’t happen in China,” said the aforementioned expert.

“The problems didn’t only happen to the old products, but also to the new ones. I bought my HP6930P laptop in November 2009. In only two weeks it had the problem of splash screen then the blank screen occurred,” said another consumer from Beijing. “Right now I am still reasoning with them. It seems like I didn’t buy a laptop but endless trouble, which affected my work and rest.”

Indifference of HP

Maybe HP has too much confidence in its public relation department. In spite of being severely criticized by many consumers and experts, they still remained “calm”. When confronted with the wave of complaints, HP only had one answer: “We only adopt the one-on-one solutions to the problems.” When the consumers started to consider serious action in order to maintain their rights, HP still announced that it “will not give any comments on the unproved case”. The latest announcement of HP only told the consumers that the problematic laptop type could be seen in HP’s after-sale website; however, no detailed information was available.

Some consumers said that HP simply used old main boards as a replacement for the dysfunctional main boards. HP denied the truth of the complaint, saying that it is impossible to replace the owners’ main boards with old ones. HP also advised that the customers having doubts over the quality could go to HP’s Golden Medal After-sale Service Center for examination.

Nevertheless, this Golden Medal After-sale Service Center was also repulsed by the consumers.

A website launched a survey in September 2009 in order to clarify the customers’ opinions about HP’s after-sale service. 1568 Netizens attended the survey. Many of them thought that HP was good at shirking the responsibility and 38% of them believed that the service of Golden Medal After-sale Service Center could not live up to its name.

A source which is very familiar with HP said: “This is the evil consequence of HP’s outsourcing its after-sale service to an independent company. The top managers of HP could not hear the complaints from the public.”

The journalists also enquired the staff working in the HP Golden Medal After-sale Service Center about the complaints from the customers. When asked whether there were a lot of V2000 and V3000-series computers sent for repairing and whether these computers had design defects, an employee said smiling: “We are not working for HP. So we can not give any comments on this matter.”

The lawyers thought that HP’s words and deeds lacked the sincerity that is needed to win the customers’ hearts. One of them said: “We are waiting for the AQSIQ’s research result. We also hope that HP could do something that lives up to its reputation, like recalling the problematic computers.”