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...
Jimmy Ray Purser is the technical co-host for Cisco's TechWise and BizWise TV. Jimmy Ray also conducts advanced training for engineers across North America and Europe and regularly speaks at industry conferences such as VON, CeBIT, N+I, and Networkers. As a field engineer, Jimmy Ray experiences networking first hand behind the console or in the rack. He is an active member in the IEEE and the Ethernet Alliance and has designed, installed and tested numerous networks for Fortune 500 companies, the United States military and other institutions worldwide. He holds 3 U.S. patents for Ethernet security algorithms with two others pending and one defensive publication, as well as numerous other vendor certifications in networking and security.
Purser holds a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Southern Illinois University is currently pursuing a master of science degree in electrical engineering.
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PB Legend
When I worked for Packard Bell back in the day, everyone there was pretty pissed off at them too, albeit for different reasons.
It is ironic that HP's quality appears to be approaching the quality of the Packard Bell, which was known fondly back then as "the paper weight with a bunch of pretty lights on it".
wah, wah, wah
Oh Jimmy Ray! A great sidebar would read: "Hey, I am Jimmy Ray, a former HP employee, clearly still angry and now working for a competitor." Didn't see a comment about winning at all costs against HP ProCurve, or Cisco's failed attempt to match the HP ProCurve lifetime warranty, or those proprietary and budget-choking 'legendary' Cisco service contracts.
Reply
I am not angry at all. I enjoyed working with some great folks at HP. It is just sad to what happened to HP overall. Personally, as a SE I think I always owe it to my customers and my quota carrying SR's to let the best design win at all ethic cost. I was talking about consumer grade products and not commercial grade stuff at all. Certainly, commercial grade stuff is (hopeful) more then a silly blog entry. However, I would be happy to discuss this anytime...how about at your next customer meeting?
Couldn't agree with you more
My recent issue with Dell required a call to techincal support and my issue is with the handling of customer service and most important....follow-up and ownership. There is a well known NVIDIA chip issue used in lots of Dell laptops and unfortunately I own two. One just broke and now after 6 days of waiting, I am no further along than on my 1st call. Some mystery department has to authorize an extended warranty to handle the NVIDIA defect and never does. I posted more on the Dell community site.
http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/direct2dell/archive/2008/09/12/nvidia-gpu-update-limited-warranty-enhancement-details.aspx
I hope the rep tonight keeps her promise of a call back tomorrow.
It has been 5 or 10 years
It has been 5 or 10 years since I refused to buy any more HP printers--no regrets. Yes, the cynical cheap printer, expensive ink, was part of it, but it was mostly just two or three HP printers that pooped out on me. Yeah, guess they toasted the brand--there was a time when I took pride in only buying HP printers.
Product and Support - Both are pathetic
I was unfortunate to buy a HP laptop. 11 months after purchase it started having display problems. 3 months, 7 visits, 4 motherboards later, the problem remained unfixed. I have given up on the laptop because no one in HP cares to respond.
The best part is, the laptop has NVIDIA chip. When they couldn't fix it, they gave me back the laptop with a motherboard which had Intel Display chip ! I had them change it back to the correct Motherboard.
No HP product for me ever.
Could it be your wallet?
I get your rant. I totally get it. But ask yourself this: Do you shop at WalMart or Target? Do you tend to buy the products (no matter which kind of product, not just technology products) that are the cheapest? Do you always look for "a deal"?
If yes, then you are helping with causing the quality issue(s) and helping with pushing production to countries where labor and raw materials are cheaper. Overall the way consumers "vote" for products with their wallets determines what companies focus on when deciding how to produce something. If the company sees that their cheaper products sell more than the higher quality ones (if they have them), they will tend to make more of the cheaper ones and lower the quality of the more expensive ones to maximize their profit. That's true no matter what kind of product you look at.
So unless there is a shift in consumer mindset away from always chasing the "best deal", the issue you're complaining about will remain. The only way you can change it is by "voting" with your wallet for the kinds of products you want companies to make.
Reply
Good call. Personally, I like shopping at Target because they have Subway Sandwich shop built in, so I can eat and shop at the same time. However, I do look for the best deals on quality stuff. I do not buy eMachines, Acer computers or newer General Motors cars because the quality is just not there. When I really need it, it may not be there for me, no matter what the savings is.
Not only HP
Hello Jimmy,
I read your article with interest, but you seem to consider the decrease of quality is specific to HP and does not impact other brands. Let's be realistic :
- All IT companies are outsourcing everything they can to cheaper countries
- All IT products are turning into commodities, that need to be replaced at a always higher frequency rate
- Cutting cost is a priority for all IT companies, and unfortunately this impacts the quality of components, the quality of support, but as well R&D (do you see any big technology gap between the various IT players ?)
So I don't believe this is about HP, this is more a pattern that we can see in the overall IT industry.
And all these companies are afraid to lose market share by investing in quality, because everyone's wallet is tight these days (consumers and companies) so everyone is looking for cheap solutions.
So these companies are giving us what we ask for...
Can you believe you can get a high quality printer for 50$ ? Or a high quality notebook at 400 $ ?
So when consumers and companies can spend more money, I am sure there will be more quality products on the market (at a higher price of course...)
Pierre (France)
Reply to Pierre
That is a good call Pierre. Sadly, today the bean counters look at the bottom line too closely. Trying to explain quality IT to a bean counter is like trying to teach old folks to drive fast in the left lane and slow in the right lane. Maybe I should have wrote about how accountants and lawyers have trashed quality!
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