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.