Pissed Off About Poor Quality

The decline of HP's legendary quality

I am pissed off. I am not sure what at so I thought I would start writing and see if I can figure it out. I know who I am pissed at and that is Hewlett Packard (HP). It's not a competitive thing either. I love the competition between anyone. Heck, that is what I miss the absolute most (still) about field sales. That two roosters in a hen house attitude slugging it out for every single dollar was the BEST. Oh man! I still get the chills thinking about it.

But I will not let myself go there, because I want to stay mad. I am even listening to my daughters iPod playlist; oh yes this is serious. Just like anything, a small thing grows to a huge thing and then I start thinking and then it's game over, because in my conspiracy theorist tiny whiny brain, I hear the statement; "Oh, now I get it"

and it all started with a simple click to print a document....

My printer jammed for the third time in a row. It's that crappy duplexer that causes it. But then the mouse stopped working which is a problem since two of my existing USB ports are flat and I just replaced a NIC in that same PC, so now I need a USB hub. Then after printing I noticed that once again I was out of ink. That is the reason I am printing on my wife's printer in the first place. My printer is out of ink also. Not happy...but OK, I'll just go to Office Max this morning, but man alive, it seems like I just went there to buy ink the other day. Then I went into a non acid flashback (insert wavey screen transition here);

There I am, nine years ago, a young engineer working at the pinnacle engineering company in the world; Hewlett Packard. A company built by two engineers with the sole purpose of building the best products in the world. Boy did we ever. Not only were the products unreal but HP had a culture; "The HP Way" and it was really amazing. Customers believed HP stood for "High Priced" but never low quality. I remember walking into customer switching closets with tape over dead ports on Cisco switches with bad PHYs or LEDs that bleed over on 3Com switches and thinking that would have never passed HP's rigid QA process in the first place. HP meant quality first.

I remember at one President's Club one of the printer VP's stood on top of a HP printer and smashed a Dell/Lexmark printer "Gallagher Style" with a sledge hammer to show how tough the HP printer was and whatta floater the Dell/Lexmark printer was. But really, it was to take pride in making good stuff.

As time moved forwarded, I heard Carly Fiona..whatever... say, "Printer Ink is 51% of HP's overall profit"

And now I understand.

No need for quality assurance when Ink is the name of the game. We started cutting back everything. OEM (rebranding someone else products as your own IE: HP iPod, HP TV, HP Cameras, etc...) was the order of the day. OEM puts the manufacture at a disadvantage because you do not own the intellectual property. You trade that away for time to market. But to me that's like going to your brother in laws house to watch the same home movies you would see at your mother in laws because he lives one block closer. There is not enough Newcastle in the world to reduce that suck factor. Engineering was moved overseas. I was at ProCurve and the engineers were told that their jobs are going to Singapore. HP's awesome medical division was sold off, the semi conductor line we all depended on was waxed. Innovation is not as important as shareholder profits. Instead of printers that last forever, printers are as disposable as ink. PC's and servers were all cut in favor of Compaq. I have went thru more HP PC's then a Indian Restaurant goes thru toilet paper. Just plain ole thin plastic crap. I have went thru just as many server power supplies.

Don't even think about calling tech support if you are a consumer (I do not know about the commercial grade stuff any more). I had a friend tell me they called and spoke to a dude named Abe Blinkin'! From the Mel Brooks Robin Hood movie? Man things are tough everywhere. We used to make fun of manufactures doing the things HP is doing now. Heck if you stood on a printer now, it would be your shoe...and it would still need ink.

Now as a customer of HP and no longer an employee, I can say that I will never buy anymore HP products. Which pisses me off. As a consumer, HP used to be a name I could trust and recommend to family/friends. Now it is just a company that has the initials of a company I once knew. A outer shell of its former self. It just sucks for all of us and THAT pisses me off.

Jimmy Ray Purser

Trivia File Transfer Protocol
The Pythagorean's took an oath not only for the pursuit of mathematics but that they would never ever touch any type of beans. I guess that was to keep the farting down at the meetings...

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