I was on the phone yesterday catching up with a friend who runs a boutique market research agency in the Silicon Valley. She was running errands at the end of her workday, and was picking up her all-in-one HP printer from the repair shop when I called. This was at least the third or fourth time she’s had to take the printer in for repair, due to its “horrendous paper jams,” she told me. She’s lost all patience with the beast.
She was so frustrated with her failing printer that our business conversation got diverted into HP printer bashing. We started by talking about how much we used to love the laser printers that HP made in the 1990’s. Both of our firms had HP printers back then, printers that produced great quality prints and operated reliably for over a decade. She’s now about ready to throw her 3- or 4-year old all-in-one into a dumpster.
When she finished venting about her HP printer, I complained about the HP LaserJet P2055dn that I bought just 6 months ago. It prints OK, but not as well as I’d like, but that’s not my primary issue. (My prior LaserJet printed better, even as it aged.)
This LaserJet suffers from communication errors with my Macs; jobs disappear into the ether. Despite 128MB of RAM, it prints S – L – O – W – L – Y. Heaven help me if I have to print a multi-page document from the web. Worse yet, anything that includes a barcode — like a boarding pass, a USPS shipping label, or an event ticket. Yesterday’s 2-page ticket (with a bar code) took almost 30 minutes before the first page came out of the printer. Just think of how that log-jammed everything else in the queue. Boarding passes usually take 5-10 minutes to print… It makes me grit my teeth when I think about HP’s claim that the first page prints out in <x> seconds. Yeah, right.
Unfortunately, I bought a new HP-branded toner cartridge at the time I got the printer: an investment of over $160. The cartridge is unused, but it’s now time to replace the toner. Thinking about the sunk cost in that cartridge and its value in proportion to the printer’s price is the only thing that’s keeping me from throwing out my new printer just like my friend. The cartridge is specific to the printer, so if I dispose of the printer, the toner is money down the drain. (The environmentalist in me cringes at the thought of disposing of a printer when it’s not even a year old.)
So my friend is now actively shopping for a replacement printer, and tells me she’ll never consider an HP printer again.
I’ll probably use up my toner cartridge, and then go shopping myself. Whether HP printers will be on my next shopping list is unlikely, unless something miraculous happens to improve the printer driver before the new toner cartridge gets used up. If web pages could print in seconds I’d be happier, but knowing I’m facing a minimum 5-minute wait before the first page comes out of the printer is a source of huge frustration, day after day… It’s like a toothache that never goes away.
So here we have two small business owners actively disenchanted with our HP printers, and talking to each other about what the quality decline must be doing to HP’s printer brand. And the time we’re both wasting as a result: she with trips to the repair guy in Los Altos, me with those unbearable delays before the first page comes out of the printer.
What makes this story so disheartening is that both of us worked for HP earlier in our careers. As former employees (and former shareholders), we’d like to feel better about the brand. My friend might even have played a role on the laser printer marketing team back in the 1980’s.
So how did HP lose its way?
I suspect that HP spent so much time focusing on driving profits with all those printer consumables that they took their eye off the ball when it was time to ensure quality standards on the printers themselves…
The old HP, the one we worked for, used to obsess about quality standards. It used to be an inside joke among employees: the size of the gap between HP products’ actual performance and the modest claims that the company would make within advertising or marketing materials. I guess the new HP is different.
If only they offered a money-back guarantee for the people they’ve disenchanted… The results might send a financial signal that it’s time to start putting a higher priority on quality for devices whose life cycles should last years.
