China Central Television’s (CCTV) “315 Evening Gala” is an important national occasion held every March 15th to expose defective merchandise to the public and protect consumers’ rights. This year it covered major quality defects in two types of Hewlett-Packard (HP) laptops.
Example of HP laptop with faulty video in China. (From BTV.com.cn)
Since 2009, the HP Pavilion dv2000 and Compaq Presario V3000 laptops have been the major faulty merchandise consumers have complained about. In March 2010, lawyers on behalf of 170 consumers appealed to the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, asking HP to recall 40 types of laptops with overheated graphics cards and flashing screen.
On March 16th an interview broadcast by Beijing Television was posted on youku.com. The video showed that a user had his HP laptop repaired ten times by HP Beijing Golden Service Department and an engineer in the department complained they had to deal with 3000 repair orders. However, a staff in China’s HP Consumer Support Center denied any technical problems with HP laptops, passing the blame to cockroaches.
“What we can’t deal with are cockroaches in college students’ dorms. They are creepy,” said Yuan Ming, a HP Consumer Experience Commissioner in the interview.
Immediately Yuan’s remarks provoked consumers. In one day the video has been replayed over half a million times. The viewers’ comments were brimmed over with dissatisfaction and anger.
One commenter mocked at Yuan’s remarks that Chinese cockroaches had a high IQ and exclusively liked to bite HP laptops.
Another commenter wrote that it was nonsense and if so, how come HP forget to promote laptops with cockroach killer.
In order to alleviate the fury, HP promised to extend the two-year warranty periods but it failed to win consumers over.
Another user said extending two years meant suffering two more years.
One HP user said he had spent about a thousand Yuan on computer repair, but the screen was still blacking out and flashing. He recalled the first time he walked into a repair shop, and the repairman guessed that it was a HP laptop straight away without see it after he mentioned the problems.
On March 14th the official website of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine showed the watchdog had launched an investigation into these cases.
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Sources: Hexun, youku
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