Complaints India

Dear sir/madam,

I have had a horrifying experience dealing with HP in India compared to the first-rate treatment provided by the same company in London. This clearly indicates that the company has double standards - one for the Developed world and another for Developing countries, regardless of the fact that it sells its products at the same price.

I would like to provide a chronological sequence of the pain I have gone through dealing with HP and yet not been able to find any solution.

1. On 26th Aug, I faced a problem that my laptop was not charging at all. I called up HP customer support (HPCS) and they advised me to update BIOS by downloading software from a link sent by them. I did that and yet the problem was not solved. I called up HPCS again and they told me that the earlier link was not correct and they will send me yet another link. I downloaded the software and tried again. The battery problem was solved, but my laptop became extremely slow and Windows kept hanging and re-booting itself.
2. I called up HPCS again the next day (27th Aug) and they advised me to take the laptop to their service centre after fixing an appointment. I called the service centre at least 15-20 times on the contact nos. provided by HPCS, but no one picked up the phone. I then decided to take my laptop to the dealer (Croma) from where I purchased it in Dec\\\'2010. The service manager at Croma coolly told me that it was \\\"normal\\\" for the HP service centre not to pick up the phone and I should simply walk-in. I followed his advice and went to the Sakinaka service centre. After testing my laptop, the service engineer told me that (possibly) due to the repeated re-booting of Windows, the laptop\\\'s hard disc had crashed and needs to be replaced. He also mentioned that the primary reason why I had a battery charging problem was that my BIOS chip battery was dislodged.
3. Since the service centre requires authorization and the replacement hard disc from HP, they logged the problem and assured me that I should get the replacement latest by 29th August. When I spoke to them again on 30th, I was told that there was some error in logging my complaint and they will log a fresh complaint, and the replacement part will now arrive on 1st Sep. Since I was leaving for UK, I raised a fuss with them and they finally arranged for the hard disc on 31st Aug.
4. The service centre replaced my hard disc, but refused to re-load Windows OS. They said that I have to order Recovery CDs directly from HP and it normally takes a week to obtain them. HP follows a strange policy, wherein they do not provide recovery CDs along with the new laptop, but one has to either order them from HPCS or create them personally. Since there was no communication either by the vendor or in the accompanying literature provided with the laptop, I was completely unaware of this practice.
5. When I called up HPCS, they said that as per their records, my warranty had already expired, even though I had purchased the laptop less than 9 months ago. After providing all my purchase details and vigorous argument, they agreed to send me the Recovery CD. I received an email confirmation from HP regarding the same.
6. I returned from London after 2 weeks and my wife told me that the recovery CDs had not arrived. When I called up HP, they told me that they had no record of my request for recovery CDs and that I need to make a fresh request. I did that again on 20th Sep and received the CDs on 24th Sep. I called up HPCS and followed the instructions provided by them for reloading the OS, but after 2 failed attempts (each attempt takes over 2 hours), they advised me to download another software and create a bootable CD. I did that and tried one more time, but the OS failed to upload.
7. I called up HPCS again on 26th Sep and after some heated discussion; they finally agreed to send a service engineer to my place the same afternoon. I kept waiting that day, but neither the service engineer turned up nor returned any of my calls. I called up HP\\\'s regional customer care manager again and after complaining bitterly, the service engineer did turn up. He too spend 2 hours repeating the same procedure which I had done earlier, but the problem persisted. He finally confirmed that HP had sent me a wrong set of recovery CDs and he called up HPCS to order a fresh set of recovery CDs.
8. I received the recovery CDs today morning and tried loading the OS, but the same error message appeared again. I called up HPCS again and demanded that I speak to a senior person. I was put on hold for quite a while and the line finally got disconnected. By now, I was too fed up of this process and decided not to interact with HP anymore. It is probably more efficient for me just to discard this fairly new laptop and buy a new (non-HP) one instead.

I have SMS and email records of each of the above transactions with HP and I\\\'m sure the company itself will have their phone and email records.

I would like to compare this pathetic service in India with the one in UK. I had a similar hard disc problem this January and called up HP customer care in UK. Even though the laptop was purchased in India, they guided me to do some simple diagnostic checks and confirmed that my hard disc needs to be replaced. They arranged for the laptop to be picked from my residence at a designated time, had it serviced and delivered it back within a week (as promised). They also had the correct version of Windows pre-loaded on my laptop and interestingly, also send me a discount voucher for purchase of HP supplies. It is really hard to imagine how a global company can foster such double standards.

Kindly advise on what I should do next - just treat this purchase as a lost cause or fight for the genuine rights of the Indian consumer?

Regards
Sharad Gupta

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