HP Customer Service ... what service?

I bought my HP Photosmart 8250 a few years ago. Of late it began paper - jamming, so I duly call up Hewlett Packard here in Ireland. The calls to a 1890 ( 'low call' ) number yielded nothing. I would simply get a nice female voice asking me if I was a 'Home' or 'Business' customer, a direction to their website, and then get cut off. Three times. I couldn't believe it.

I eventually found a number for sales, rang it, and explained the problem. The lady at the other end ( British accent, call centre in Britain? ) couldn't believe I was getting cut off either, and gave me another number. This other number worked, but the charge for the call was 50 cent A MINUTE!

To cut a long story short, I ended up talking to IndiaTech for almost 20 minutes. At the end of it all, it was decided that HP could not help me. As my printer is out of warranty, HP just shunt the customers on to a 'Partner' which SELL support. Yes indeed.

One of the things my printer needs is a cleaning kit, a software solution, but no way am I paying 10 euro for it. Similarly, I can't find the setup disk for the machine. No way am I paying 15 euro for that. HP have, it would seem, lost the run of themselves. It happens to all big companies a few years before they end up on their knees. It makes me wonder if CEO's are born under a cabbage leaf.

Dell learned this lesson the hard way a year or two ago - and the 36% drop in market share reflected it. To be fair to Dell, I also have a Dell 962 'All in one' printer, and everything it needs can be downloaded from the net, free of charge. The only thing you pay for are the ink cartridges, and that's the way it should be.

I will never buy HP ever again. Their European headquarters are in Dublin, but 'any old thing' will do when it comes to "customer service". It would seem that they do not even know where Ireland is. About 10 years ago I bought a printer from them and registered it. All of the mailshots which followed were addressed 'Groot Brittanie".

Next time, Dell it is.