I’ve had an incredibly discouraging encounter with Hewlett-Packard over the last few days. My home office printer that I purchased last year had a "scanner failure" and now it’s inoperable. Here are the lowlights:

  • HP admitted the printer was junk. They acknowledged it was a hardware failure and it could not be repaired.
  • HP doesn’t have anyone in the U.S. that can assist you with their junkie printers. When you call their customer service number, you get someone in India. I love India. I just have trouble understanding the Indian dialect when I’m trying to get resolution to my printer problems.
  • HP was unwilling to fix the problem even thought their printer was junk. Because I experienced the hardware failure in October rather than a few months earlier, they would not replace the printer.
  • HP offered a discount on a new replacement printer, so I opted for that and requested overnight delivery. The replacement printer was supposed to be delivered yesterday, but it never arrived.
  • When I called India back last night, I had to talk to three different people for over 25 minutes to learn that the details of delayed delivery had been passed along to "the supervisor." When I asked to speak to "the supervisor," I learned that "the supervisor" wasn’t in yet because it was 5:00 a.m. in India.
  • When I requested credit for the additional cost I paid for overnight delivery, I was told I’d have to call back again to request the refund. I told the customer service representative that I wanted to process that request without calling back (remember I had to talk with three people over 25 minutes). The CSR said I would have to call back tomorrow, and, again, I could not talk to a supervisor.

Through this process I’ve learned that HP builds junkie printers. They’ll acknowledge that their printers won’t work. They won’t help you fix their junkie printers. And, you have to deal with their junkie customer service to attempt to get a replacement that may never arrive. In other words, I don’t recommend buying a Hewlett-Packard printer.

OK, that’s it for my first rant on my blog. I feel much better now.

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