Special Column: Guest bloggers
HP have long been fighting a battle against refill cartridges, especially in my part of the world. But I think they’re going too far in this case — abusing customers and damaging their credibility and brand in the process.
Recently I received spam in my inbox from the website www.hporiginalsupplies.com, in Indonesian, inviting me to the HP Original Supplies Zone, where it said I could receive information about original HP products. (The email said I had received it because I had participated in HP promotions before. The only way that they could have received that particular email address was through my official dealings with HP, when at no time do I recall giving permission to be spammed — which raises its own concerns.)
The email itself contained some links to HP.com but its images etc were mostly hosted on the hporiginalsupplies.com website. I could find no easy way of confirming this was a legit HP site — the website was registered by a local webhosting company called Master Web Network. So no way of telling there. And as you may have found if you clicked on the link, the home URL itself throws up only a blank page; only this one, for unsubscribing, seems to.
It took a while for the HP guys to figure it out too: They came back to me today to tell me it is legit. It’s a website for an “electronic direct mailer” or eDM for “the HP Original Rewards program in Indonesia…. HP Original Rewards is an HP loyalty program designed for Small and Medium Businesses (SMB) for the purchase of original HP print cartridges.”
To their credit, HP acknowledge that the “eDM doesn’t comply with HP’s brand standards” and have promised to do something about it. But that’s not really what troubles me. What troubles me is this:
I can understand HP’s difficulties here. It must be hard to launch these kinds of promotions while keeping an eagle eye on agencies and promoters you may outsource the work to. But if you’re trying to get the message across to consumers that they should be buying your genuine products and not falling for fakes and knock-offs, you shouldn’t be spamming them from a domain that itself looks fake and dodgy.
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Jeremy Wagstaff has worked as a journalist since 1986 -- for BBC, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal and the Far Eastern Economic Review. Since 2000 he has been writing a technology column (called Loose Wire) and has since 2004 appeared regularly on the BBC World Service. He also maintains a blog, Loose Wire Blog.
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There are 3 comments for this entry. Add yours
Linux newbie
well, i think the original HP’s spareparts is still too expensive for Indonesians (so asking people to buy their original spareparts is almost useless i guess). But HP is still the best brand in Indonesia for laser printer. It’s after sales services are excellent (although might be provided by third party firms not the HP itself) that makes their TCO is the minimum amongst it’s rivals.
August 26th, 2007 at 9:56 pm
Indra
HP people knows exactly that Indonesian(s) would just complaint. No more than that ;-)
HP worries much about refill since its (printer division) real business is selling cartridges! He can even willing to give you the printer if you agreed to consume its cartridges! Well, this one is just an assumption if anyone would dare to negotiate ;-)
September 3rd, 2007 at 2:06 am
Chuck Miser
You know I never could understand this you have a guy in Cupertino probably makes 75K a year and then you have a guy in Jakarta makes 9k a year and they expect you to pay the same amount for their products in both locations and yet they probably to keep there costs down manufacture somewhere in the 3rd world. Something has got to give somewhere besides just common sense.
October 2nd, 2007 at 10:09 pm