Laptops HP's recycling program is a sham

S

sydras

Skilled
I had said this some time ago and I say it again....HP is one of the worst companies to purchase a laptop from. I would also like to mention that their so called ""recycling program" and "environment friendly" literature on their website is a farce.

I had a bad experience with them some 4 years ago. To summarize, my laptop screen had gone blank and the then HP service centre at 100ft road, Bangalore had done a so called "replacement" of my laptop LCD panel for a significant sum of Rs 9000/-. I was told that the replacement panel had a warranty of one year.

The replacement panel conked off within 6 months(I do not understand how a new panel can conk off in such a short time which leads be to believe that they had not done any replacement in the 1st place and probably just cleaned the LCD contacts). When I approached them, they mentioned that all HP replacement parts carry a 90 day replacement warranty only and asked me to pay another Rs 12,000/- to get it replaced. Needless to say, I did not go forward with their "suggestion".

Anyway, coming to the present, I wanted to finally dispose of this old laptop and instead of throwing it in the trash, I decided to check whether I could give it for e-recycling. An online search revealed a program by HP to safely dispose of HP products only.

http://www8.hp.com/in/en/hp-information/supplies-recycling/hardware.html

The website listed Maha Electronics as the service provider in Bangalore for this purpose. Given my experience with the service industry in Bangalore in general and HP in particular, I was skeptical of any success.

Anyway, I thought I should try to be a responsible human being and I called their Indiranagar service centre only to be told that they do not provide such a service. I then called up the toll free HP customer care. Surprisingly, their IVR system very confidently mentions an option for recycling. The customer care lady was nice and but as expected, she provided the same information as was available at the link. When I mentioned this to her, she asked me to try the Jayanagar service centre. By this time I could sense that she wanted the conversation to end and I thanked her and kept the call.

I then contacted the Jayanagar service centre where the usual routine followed...ignorance was being professed...the call was being transferred and I was asked to finally contact someone in sales. The sales person while being nice mentioned a process and to contact some HP reglobe site(Searching online revealed that there is no such site).

I've given up at this point. I do not wish to continue to make a fool of myself and try to get HP to follow through with their so called "recycling program". I will try to dispose of the laptop with a 3rd party service provider failing which, I am going to throw it in the trash.

I feel bad for the environment but I do not have the time to pursue this any further. I just want to spread awareness about HP and their policies and hence the reason for this thread.
 
Agreed. HP is perhaps the worst of all. In college, all the HP owners suffered while all the Lenovo owners were happy.
 
On the whole, HP laptops suck. All the retailers in S.P. Road try to push HP laptops to all the customers though. Not sure exactly why. They must've some good understanding with them, or better profit margins, or some other incentive that I'm unaware of.
 
The quality of HP laptops had gone down the drain. So has their service. They can't even find replacement parts for two year old laptops.
 
srkmish said:
Agreed. HP is perhaps the worst of all. In college, all the HP owners suffered while all the Lenovo owners were happy.
Click to expand...

A similar situation occured at my workplace two years ago when all our trusty four year old Lenovo T60 and T61 laptops were being replaced by HP ProBook laptops. At first, we could not believe how our folks in procurement could have approved something like this. We're no strangers to bearing the brunt of decisions taken by our admin, IT and transport depts. due to possible kickbacks involved but this sounded plain ridiculous. HP was never a contender for business laptops. It was always either Dell or Lenovo.

Anyway, within months people's shiny new HP laptops started failing all over the place. The IT dept was tied up daily for almost a year fixing issues with these laptops. They have really suffered and and even though they replaced the specific model with a newer ProBook 6470b model, they'll probably think twice before going near HP again.
 
blkrb0t said:
On the whole, HP laptops suck. All the retailers in S.P. Road try to push HP laptops to all the customers though. Not sure exactly why. They must've some good understanding with them, or better profit margins, or some other incentive that I'm unaware of.
Click to expand...

My guess is, the product does not sell, distributor offers more commission than all the entire competition to the retailer, retailer needs to clear shelf/display space off non-selling products and with the incentive of added commission offered by the distributor, he tries his best to dump it on every customer who walks into his store but is ok with selling the same product from any brand as long as he makes a sale.

I've learned to listen but never to trust any product recommendations or product comparisions from any electronics/computer/car salesmen. Hell, from my experience, I don't even trust the waiter's recommendation at a restaurant. I always ask the waiter what the special of the day is and after I know, I order anything but that :). I've been duped far too many times w.r.t. quality or price of the item.
 
Yeah my beloved Lenovo T60 ( R60) was a wonderful performer in college. Used to be on 24/7 for download purposes and at other times great for movie watching / light gaming.
 
tkin said:
The quality of HP laptops had gone down the drain. So has their service. They can't even find replacement parts for two year old laptops.
Click to expand...

The service centre could've used the parts from my old laptop towards repair of a similar model. In fact, except for the screen, my laptop was working fine. (I have however removed the 256MB + 1GB (additionally purchased and installed) RAM chips and the 60GB HDD from the laptop.)

Useless as it was for any intensive tasks other than email, surfing etc. (thank you Intel with your wonderfully crappy 2006 Celeron CPUs btw), they could've rescued the working parts if someone needed repair of a similar model. But I don't think anyone would want to repair such a relic in 2014 and based on your experience with HP finding replacement parts for 2 year laptops(which is absurd btw), I don't think they would care for such old laptops.
 
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