Cornered with HP services issues

Situated in the Bharuch district of Gujarat, Bharuch city is located on the
banks of river Narmada and is a major sea port as well as being the
administrative headquarter of the district. The city sees a lot of agricultural
and industrial activities. It is one of the heavily industrialized cities in
Gujarat. There are a number of chemical plants here, producing fertilizers,
paints, dyes, cotton, textiles and dairy products. Gujarat's biggest liquid
cargo terminal is also situated here. Many multinational companies have set up
their manufacturing units in and around the city. Currently, the main focus of
the market is on the home, SOHO and retail segments as these verticals are
helping the channel to sustain their business. "There is great opportunity lying
ahead in the SOHO segment as 90 percent of the dealers in Bharuch are focused on
the same," said Talkin Zamindar, CEO, Media Infocom.

Despite the slowdown in the past few months, the IT market of Bharuch has
been progressing steadily. It has maintained its moderate sales record and the
partners are hoping that the coming months would yield better results. Dell is
the top performing brand in the city when it concerns laptops. As far as
desktops is concerned, Compaq, Zenith and HCL is a hit among the customers.
Channel partners claim that HP sales has gone down for the past eight to nine
months because of the lack of marketing activities in the local region. "HP
supports the bigger players in Ahmedabad and we felt totally ignored. They do
make a lot of commitments but when it comes to fulfill those promises they are
not bothered at all," added Zamindar.

The issues regarding HP has gained prominence in association meetings and in
IT Panchayats. Partners have raised the issues at various levels but they claim
that complaints go no further and no concrete steps are taken to resolve the
issues. Throwing more light on the same, Manish Shah, CEO, Shroff IT Services
said, "Delay in services is the main issue I am facing with HP, whether it is
printers or laptops. They take such a long time to resolve issues that now we
are habituated with the company's attitude for a quite while now. It becomes
very difficult to handle our customers' complaints, which again puts us in bad
light. We keep on constantly following up with HP, but there seems to be a
communication gap between us."

Voicing their displeasure with the system HP has in place, channel partners
especially are unhappy about the attitude of designated service providers. "The
vendor does not listen to our complaints nor takes any action regarding the
same. We can only make contact with HP via e-mail as no one is ready to share
the numbers of the top management with us, which is very depressing," added
Jignesh Patel of Shivam Computers.