whatever happened to HP?

I have been a big fan of Hewlett-Packard over the years. I bought (for $1100 in 1993, when that was a lot of money) a laserjet IIIP printer, which is still running great. (thanks to moe at fixyourownprinter.com). Now I own an hp 1012 and 6122 printer. both work great.

so when i saw an hp laptop, even tho it was pricey, i jumped at it.

but from the get-go-- first, the salesperson told me it had lightscribe-- he was misinformed, it didn't. then it had this weird audio problem, noise from the hard drive and fan motors bled through to the speakers, sometimes very badly.

so i finally shipped it in via their mail-in warranty service, and they replaced the CPU fan and shipped it right back, but-- same problem. also the packing material they provided fell apart, so it got bumped a lot in shipping. I complained and they sent me another shipping box and back to california it went. this time someone else in the repair dept got it. they left some weird chinese websites and other software on it but i don't care as they fixed the audio problem -- apparently a system software upgrade. unfortunately, the packing material fell apart again, damaging the hinge covers and breaking the DVD drive. So i sent it back a third time. this time it came back with dvd drive fixed and new lcd / top cover to fix the broken hinge, but . . . the packing material fall apart again, and now I can't close it, as the top is no longer aligned with the latch holes. was this an error in the fix or caused by bumping in shipping?? also this time instead of sending me a box they accidentally scheduled a pickup, i told them this and they asked me to ship it back in the box i last received.

sigh to their credit they gave me another year's warranty for free, and i bought another year at a discount rate, which i thought was a good idea given that this thing is having so many problems. it's not so much that the unit is faulty, the problem is, they have this packing material that simply does not work. their poor packing materials and the hurry to get it out the door have resulted, not in faster better service, but a loss of the unit for almost 2 weeks total. i would have preferred that they kept it for 3 days the first time and fixed it and packed it right.

who is running this outfit, and what hurry-up mangement credo is making them so unaware of common sense?

HP, if you're reading this, I am happy to do a presentation on the importance of pacing in the workplace, and awareness of the customer being more important than process. :-)

sigh i miss the old HP where everything worked the first time.

--jl