HP faces criticism over product and service

Hewlett Packard has come in for heavy criticism following claims that it supplied defective products and failed to provide a reasonable standard of customer service and support.

Mike Moyse, partner of systems integrator TTSD, purchased an HP Colorado IDE Internal Tape Streamer, but spent five hours unsuccessfully trying to install the device. After calling HP's channel support service, he was then redirected to HP support in Holland and spent a further five hours talking to technical staff who were still unable to provide a solution.

He commented: 'Eventually I was directed to a new version of the software in a password-protected area of HP's Website. But that only resulted in various errors and crashes. I am now going to change it for an Iomega model.'

Uwe Voigt, HP's technical support manager, said: 'I have had a lot of calls about this particular device. It does not appear to work on some PCs. I believe it is a problem with the Pentium II and MMX technology.

The chip is too fast for the old version of the installation software.'

Ascent Computer Supplies is demanding compensation from HP after it experienced problems with the manufacturer's colour flatbed scanner (PC Dealer, 4 March).