Coimbatore resellers boycott HP

The Coimbatore market observed November 19-25 as boycott HP week. The week has been observed as black days by city resellers who boycotted HP’s entire range of products. Named ‘HP 1925 Black Days’, the protest got significance with the entire channel community here expressing in a single voice their displeasure and protest against HP for alleged harassment of the channel community.

The entire action was triggered of by a raid initiated by HP through its private agency to curb free-flow of counterfeit cartridges in the Coimbatore market. HP, along with its investigative team and local police, had carried out this raid on 1st November. Maruthi Computers and Sujee Computers were the two shops where the raid had been conducted. It is understood that HP and its team had recovered a couple of fake cartridges from these shops.

Meanwhile, the team had approached the local police to file an FIR and take a legal course on the concerned parties. What annoyed the channel community in Coimbatore was HP and its team’s least respect for the local association-Coimbatore Computer Dealer Association (CCDA)-which tried to intervene in the matter and solve it amicably. Secondly, the market feels HP is harassing the reseller community in the name of raids regularly. According to them, HP has conducted four raids in the last six months alone.

Interestingly, the persistent approach to take police and legal action against Maruthi Computers by the team was not well received, as Maruthi is a key partner of HP and has won many awards from the vendor for its outstanding performance and commitment to the brand. “If this can happen even to a sincere partner, who else will be spared by them,” asked a leading reseller of Coimbatore. “We are not afraid of instigated raids, but if HP is determined to curb fake products, it should catch the culprit instead of harassing innocent traders like us.”

By and large, the channel community in Coimbatore market stood united with the association to boycott HP’s products for the November 19-25 week. CCDA is again meeting shortly and will chart out further course of action in its general body meeting. According to sources, the association is planning to extend this boycott indefinitely, as there has been no response or communication from HP to solve this issue till date. It is also learnt that resellers would return their HP stocks to distributors as a sign of protest and not deal with the vendor anymore.

“We are determined and will be together till we get a favorable reply from HP. The association has tried all means to reach HP at various levels, but none of them have been available to sort it out. All we got is HP is not directly involved in this initiative and is carried out by a separate wing from its Apac region,” said another leading reseller.

When The DQ Week tried to contact HP officials in Delhi as well as Chennai, they preferred to remain tight-lipped about this issue and declined to comment anything, except saying that they did not have any direct role in it, as it is being handled by their Apac region. When contacted, HP’s agency EIPR also declined to comment on this issue.

Several leading resellers of Coimbatore who are also key partners for HP, such as Bloom Electronics, Ozone Computer Services, Ashish Electronics, Init Systems, e-Caps, Compu Soft Systems and Microbase, among others, have confirmed their participation in the boycott.

S GOPIKRISHNA