An Open Letter to HP CEO Mark Hurd

Mr Hurd,

I became a Hewlett Packard customer in July, 2009 when I ordered a Pavilion Elite desktop. Having used HP workstations and other equipment back in the 80’s while I was in college, I knew that your company was known for solid engineering and reliability. And in fact, HP touts “A reputation for quality and reliability” as part of its brand promise [ https://h20375.www2.hp.com/portal/site/publicsmartportal/WhyHP.html].

But here I sit, nearly 9 months later, typing this letter to you on a Sony laptop, as I have had to send my HP desktop in for repair (or replacement) for a fifth time. As it stands, I estimate that I’ve had to forego the use of this desktop for more than 2 months while it’s been out of commission; and that I have personally invested about two full weeks of my own time working with your tech support team to try to work through various issues in order to end up with a stable, correctly configured system.

So, what happened?

It turns out that the motherboard used in my (and a number of related) desktops is prone to cause the computer to “blue screen” or lock-up. And this issue has spawned literally thousands of customer complaints on your own support forums [ http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Lockups-Freezes-Hangs/Pavillion-elite-e9180t-Freezes/td-p/126817, http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Lockups-Freezes-Hangs/e9280t-problems-and-complaints/td-p/143199, http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Lockups-Freezes-Hangs/Elite-e9150t-Feezes-Locks-up/td-p/93815].

My original system began locking up shortly after purchase and was replaced almost immediately with a new system. However, the new desktop also had a faulty motherboard, and it too began to lock up.

Over the intervening months, I’ve had ample opportunity to become acquainted with the sketch comedy troupe commonly known as “HP Technical Support”. I can provide you with complete details if you’re interested, but here’s a quick summary of some of my more interesting incidents:

• One fellow, who, when I called in to inquire about an error message I received when installing Microsoft Office; took over my computer via remote control and began hitting a number of “bit torrent” and file sharing sites to see if he could find an illegitimate copy that he could download and install on my behalf. I had to stop him from doing so, and ended up escalating this incident to your Executive Office for Customer Relations, where it was fully documented.

• Upon receiving my desktop back for the third time, the repair manifest showed that the motherboard had been replaced and the operating system wiped and freshly installed. However, when I booted the system, I discovered that all of my installed software and user accounts were completely intact. And a quick diagnostic test showed that the system still had the same motherboard and continued to lock-up.

• When the desktop was delivered by Fedex from its follow-up repair, my wife immediately noticed that the PC had been packed in a manner that prevented the shipping box from being fully closed and taped shut (I can provide pictures, if needed). Further inspection showed that the case was cracked and that the system did not work properly.

• I was offered a new, completely different replacement system about six weeks ago, but it was configured incorrectly and shipped to me with the wrong operating system.

After all this, it didn’t surprise me when I learned of the class-action lawsuits that were recently filed against HP [ http://www.gslawny.com/lawyer-attorney-1494899.html, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e183ff94-2be5-11df-8033-00144feabdc0.html]. Nor was I surprised to learn that third-party examinations of failure rates for both notebooks and desktops show that HP’s reliability is the lowest among the major manufacturers [ http://www.squaretrade.com/pages/laptop-reliability-1109, http://www.tomshardware.com/news/apple-asus-lenovo-computer-reliability,7364.html]

To add insult to injury, I asked for my money back once I realized the scope of the motherboard issue. However, your Case Management Team refused, saying that they had not been given ample opportunity to address the problem through technical support. When I was faced with the prospect of having to return my computer for a fifth time, I asked for a refund once again…but was told that I was only eligible for a pro-rated refund, given that I had now “had use” of the desktop for nearly 9 months.

Your Case Management Team insists that they will see this issue through to a successful resolution. Perhaps they will. But as it stands, all I have is a computer monitor and a promise that they’ll have the new replacement desktop built about 10 days from now. Yep, that’s all I have to currently show for my $1450 investment after nine months of ownership. This entire experience has been stressful and has wasted a lot of my time - certainly a lot more than I paid for the computer.

Mr Hurd, I have been told on numerous occasions that the only point of escalation beyond the Case Management team is you. Therefore, I’m asking you to live up to the brand promise of your company: Please provide me with a quality, reliable desktop.

 

Here is something I would send:

Mr. Hurd... YOU and Shang Tsung or whatever from Nvidia.
I bought a DV2315nr with the 6150, and it cooked itself to death. You guys were good about sending me a replacement, after three months. The case manage decided to customize the system with an 8400m GS, which she said is really fantastic! To my horror, that same 8400m GS that SHE bloody picked decided to die. I'm sure you are wellllllllllllllllllllllllllll aware of the 8-series Nvidia suicide rate. Lucky for me, it died about a month outside of the 1 year warranty. When I went and checked the extended warranty list, it only covered a fraction of systems, mainly with AMD systems. The funny thing is, Mr. Fool, is that it doesn't matter what's in the system, if it has a bloody Nvidia 8-series GPU, it's going to freaking die!

Oh, and by the way fool, find a way to get the HDDs on your DV4 systems to run cooler than 55C. The DV2000 suffered from this, as did the DV2500, I would know fool. Oh, speaking of which, my HDD died about 5 months in, because it was cooking itself. Then my bloody power adapter died too. And then finally the GPU killed itself.

Please, kill yourself, and take Shang Tsung and Fermi with you. I hope Nvidia goes bankrupt. I like you guys...so your sacrificial killing will do. Or you can just send me a replacement- don't want a new one. Just a DV2500 with Intel graphics.

Thanks buddy.

 

Ha that was quite an outburst! I still feel the company is not taking the matter seriously as it should have been. Countless people went for Pavilions and found their system boards burnt up a few months after the warranties expired. Not everyone can manage to buy a new laptop every year. The case was handled very shoddily with no clear intuition. Several fixes were offered : releasing a BIOS update which delayed the inevitable, considering only AMD based notebooks for warranty extension,etc. However the volume of complaints was so mammoth that HP lost track of it.

 

Its not an HP problem...remember Dell XPS lines? And mostly all Dells, they switched to ATI (ATI FTW!!!!) after all those burnt M1530 and M1330 were sent back and people looked the other way.

The one to blame is the green goblin (NVIDIA) and their faulty GPUs. I have been avoiding NVIDIA all my life, as they charge too much for the same performance as ATI and then they burn your PC...now I wonder if it was on purpose (/conspiracy theory). But seriously, HP had problems, and they switched to ATI quickly.

Remember how all Pavilions were equipped with ATI 4xx0 GPUs? Then the GT3x0 (or should I say GT2x0 they are the same) came and HP switched back...such a shame to see a company be ruined by faulty hardware and carry the load of such ineptitudes. Such a shame.

About the failure rate, that is just a very vague idea of the actual failure rate, as HP sells lots of low end laptops and people abuse them a lot, and there is no explanation on which models were sampled, considering how EliteBooks rate on par with ThinkPads and Latitudes (and even better in some cases) you can't fully rely on that Square Trade report.

Don't get me wrong. I am not an HP fan. I do have an HP Envy, and I really like it, but before this I stayed away from HP.

 

No, see, it is HP's fault, that being the way they handled it. I don't blame them for the failures of the hardware. That's on Nvidia.

But instead of replacing/fixing all those affected, they screwed most people over and just offered an extended warranty on a fraction of the machine afflicted with it. I bet even those who were offered the extended warranty still had to jump through loops. They should have issued a recall, if you have an 8-series GPU, you send it in to get it fixed. So what makes me mad is that to save money, they just decided to help a very small number of people.

 

oh...I see...sorry I dont know the story...I simply skipped anything from NVIDIA when I came in the market for a laptop...and in that time, I seriously disliked HP (namely the Pavilion line for the heating problems) therefore I never actually knew how HP really screwed everyone...such a shame such a big company, which is known for good service does that...