Sunday, January 21, 2007

Hewlett Packard Un-ethics

Michael produces all of my giclees. We purchased an awesome HPDesignJet5000PSUV printer a few years back and have been supplied with HP Studio Canvas throughout. Now, I mean a printer, in the range of $20,000. Business has been great for four or more years and we've been quite satisfied with the quality of the machine outlay and the canvas. Giclees have been beautiful, vibrant and true to color.

We recently tried to order a few rolls of Studio Canvas and have been informed by our suppliers that the line has been discontinued. What? A call to HP Customer Care ensues to question this information. By golly, don't you know it's true. Of course, the tech support person wasn't even aware of this decision by HP. Can you give us the manufacturer of the canvas? (thinking we could hunt down the source who may have re-sold to another company) "Uh, here's their name but that's all the info I'm allowed to reveal. Can I offer you the latest model with a trade-in?" Googling this company, Channel Logistics, revealed zip.

What's with these mega-giant companies? For those in the know, it's not a simple matter of just ordering another brand of canvas. It means installing new profiles and most likely a nightmare of color correction on existing files. How can they do this, but even more, how can they not provide contact information to the canvas manufacturer? Why would they be confidential at this point? Seems it's no skin off their nose.

Let this serve as a heads up to those of you considering purchasing any HP products.

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