>You were contacted after my intervention and a refund arrived along with a 20% voucher nearly three weeks after it was first promised.
Voucher? So you have to spend more money on HP products to claim a shitty 20% for HP having broken contract law? Am I interpreting this correctly?
If so, wow.
> Royal Mail told me, apologetically, that HP requested the return of the laptop while it was out for delivery, a request so rare no relevant tracking update existed. So the driver scanned the “refused delivery” option.
I'm genuinely curious -- how does this even work? This isn't something I've ever heard of anybody being able to do, for the sender to cancel delivery mid-way.
Is this someone anyone can do? Only large corporate customers? Or something in a custom contract? How does the delivery service even handle it -- do they manually call the driver on the phone and be like, "hey never mind about that one package"?
This all just seems so random.
> HP ignored my questions about how many customers were affected and why it repeatedly gave you false information. It stated merely that all affected customers had been notified. It says: “We are taking steps to ensure we deliver the first-class experience customers can expect from HP at all times, including with regard to communications with specific customers.”
Corporate speak, especially when it is directly contrary to reality, is so frustrating.
It hardly matters who's legally right and who's wrong here. The fact is, HP was once a class act. I wish I could find the writeup about the early HP35 calculator bug, where it was suggested that they just sweep it under the rug, and either Hewlett or Packard himself said no, we're going to do the right thing and fix every calculator we've shipped, period. That same boss would have said, it was our mistake, so we're going to honour the offer. A few hundred thousand bucks down the drain, but stellar reputation maintained.
It takes a long time, and makes a lot of profit, to run such a reputable brand into the ground. By the look of it, the process is nearly complete.
It could've been the best laptop on the planet and still would not buy. These guys are selling scanners that won't scan because "low ink". I'm going to assume the webcam will stop working after 100 battery cycles because .. power limits or something.
Having just finished watching "Pepsi, where's my jet?" on Netflix, all I can say is fuck Pepsi, and now fuck HP. I'm sick and tired of these big companies thinking they can run roughshod all over the world and their C-suite fat cats thinking they own the world and can do anything they want and not be beholden to the law.
Right now, on HP's own site:
HP Envy laptop: "Price starting at $1,299.99 - Save $600.00 - $699.99".[1]
50%-75% price reductions in laptops are not rare.
For reference, you can buy an HP laptop (14" Chromebook) at Costco for $230. So 399 quid ($500) seems not outside the realms of possibility for a specially discounted 17" machine.
It's pretty clear to me that even to HP employees, that bargain wasn't "too good to be true". And putting them through all that crap over it? Yeah, no.
I'm a little impressed that HP stuck to its guns once the newspaper called. Usually once something looks like it is about to become a PR problem, the calculation is made that losing a few bucks on a single purchase is the cheaper option. Instead, now we're all taking about how shitty they are.
It's not the core of the story, but man: how HP have degenerated as a company. They were a gold standard for the quality of how they ran as a company and the products they sold. Now look at them.
Under Australian law this would have had to be honored by HP
So, according to the article "a contract was formed", but despite that HP gets away with just giving them "20% off"?
If there really was a contract he should sue HP to honor it, my understanding is in the UK loser pays legal fees, so if he's sure about contract law there's no downside (I would suggest double checking the law on this though).
I have to assume this was not only one person, HP doesn't do anything for one person, so I'd have to imagine at a few hundred (or thousand) at least went out. This doesn't seem even that good a deal, the cheapest model, which I'd have to presume this to be is $649 US currently, so I can't imagine it was even worth their effort to action something like this, literally mass recalling them from the delivery trucks en route like they screwed up and sent everyone a $3000 laptop.
More like some middle manager forced some random behavior because they screwed up the listing and didn't want to be held accountable to their boss personally.
If it were actually worth more, it would be interesting to get in touch with others that had the same crap pulled on them and get HP on the TV news for being a Christmas Grinch and just a really nasty company in general for doing so to customers.
As said, this could be construed as illegal behavior if anyone bothered to lawyer up for it, but for 300-400 return, just swear never to buying anything HP again, and tell all your friends what scum they are. I have never had anyone have a good experience with an HP laptop, consumer low-end ones particularly, and already tell everyone I know to avoid them if asked.
I don't know the specifics of the law here, but it seems problematic that a company would be legally considered the owners of an item that you have purchased and be able to unilaterally rescind your contract until it has arrived on your doorstep.
1. Who determines when the item transitions from their property to yours? It seems reasonable that it would be when they accept payment for your item, but it apparently isn't.
2. If the transition occurs at the customer's door, does this mean that a parcel delivered to the wrong location (let's say, a neighbor's door) is theirs? Does mere proximity legally make the item yours? Does the carrier decide to whom the item belongs, and, if so, when? I actually don't believe the "refused delivery" story because it superficially appears to be the only legal loophole that would allow the vendor to retain property of the item.
3. I'm not sure that it's equitable to allow a company to take a relatively non-trivial amount of money from a consumer and give them unilateral leverage in the contract. Even $100 is a non-trivial amount of money for a consumer of even modest wealth, whereas $100 worth of goods for a company is a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percentage of value for even a modest merchant. If the aim of the law is to promote equity, it seems like a greater, not equal, onus would be placed on a merchant.
Seems on par with HP common operating procedure. A decade ago we ordered a couple of laptops that were discounted by 15%. The story on the website was they were a generation past their prime, so they were new laptops being sold at a discount.
When they arrived we discovered the keyboards didn't work. HP refused to honor their warranty commitment.
HP was removed from our vendor list and that of the California state government agency we were providing support services for.
I wonder how far up the HP org chart that decision (to call back a direct sale shipment from the shipper) was made.
Maybe doing so was aligned with that person's OKRs or KPIs, whether or not they considered that this would plausibly lead to complaints on social media (or to a news org consumer columnist?) that'd hurt the brand.
If they sold 1 laptop at a 1000 loss due to a mistake of theirs, it's probably more cost effective to let it go. If they sold 1000 of them, maybe they were debating the reputation damage vs the economic loss: with those numbers at least one of the unfortunate customers would make the mistake and the mishandling very public.
I genuinely believe both parties should want to buy/sell for a valid contract.
People make mistakes and just because it's a big anonymous company to the author doesn't mean there are people behind mistakes.
Once a parcel is in the mail system, is it legal in the UK for anyone, including the sender, to pull it back out of the system?
from the company that brought you: printers! and ink cartridges!
Just a reminder that HP also abandoned its “Don’t be Evil” policy (they called it “The HP Way”) though Google ditched theirs much more quickly.
Pretty ridiculous especially when all of the advertising of those computers is designed to be utterly confusing and impossible to compare for the customer. One could easily picture a 70% off sale on a computer with a different sku and a made up "regular price" advertised as a deal, it's basically how the industry operates. So it's funny to see HP claim she should have known better.
Edit: here is a US example, advertised as "Save 75%" https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/pdp/hp-elitebook-x360-1040-g8-... (I have no idea if this is a good deal or not, point is that such "savings" are a common occurence)