What did HPE say?
The response from HPE was suitably short and non-committal. In a statement to be attributed to an HPE spokesperson they said:
“Hewlett Packard Enterprise is committed to providing the highest level of customer care. The company will always work with customers on a case by case basis to offer assistance where required, and will liaise with resellers to investigate any specific concerns.”
As brief as this response was, it was better than that provided by HPEs European communications team who said: “Our agency that processes the cash back claims has had no complaints about this promotion. If they had, we would take immediate steps to review the case.”
The suggestion that HPE customers should go to bed, have some Damascene dream about their servers, be possessed of some vision where they psychically received the details of the BOGOF offer and were then able to complain is farcical at best. At worst it smacks of a complete disregard for the treatment of HPE customers by channel partners.
There was also an offer to Synonym Limited to investigate what had happened and HPE has been supplied with the invoice although there has been no further contact since then. If and when there is a resolution to that situation we will update this article via the comments box below.
Could HPE have spotted this?
Yes. It is a fairly simple piece of data analytics to identify how effective this deal was. More importantly having worked with sales teams at large companies, it is also the sort of analytics they do to see just how well a promotion works, whether there were regional success and failures and what needs to be done to make the next promotion more effective.
It will be interesting to see if HPE makes any attempt to resolve this with its end-users. One way to achieve this is to do the analysis of how many qualifying servers were sold compared to how many customers claimed the BOGOF deal. As HPE gets a copy of the invoice it would be able to quickly identify where its partners were promoting the deal and where there was little to no effort at all.
A random set of cold calls would then help it identify those customers who were disadvantaged and give it the opportunity or resolving the issue. Going forward it could then use secret shoppers to keep track of its channel and ensure that they are delivering.
For anyone who has purchased any of the following HPE server since September and NOT been given the opportunity to take advantage of the BOGOF deal the solution is to email HPE customer services and make a formal complaint.
- DL60
- DL80
- DL120
- DL160
- DL180
Conclusion
Despite all the hype, HPE is in a dogfight for survival. It is one of only two of the large IT vendors who still supplies everything to its channel, Dell being the other one. Having split HP into two separate companies HPE and HP Inc, it wanted to make a clean start with HPE to allow it to focus on survival in the enterprise space. As a major player in the SME market it needs to prove that it can deal fairly with those customers.
The question as to what HPE were seeking through this offer can also be raised. Was it reduce stock levels and increase unit sales to gain apparent market share? Was it to see whether there is an appetite for an as yet unannounced low price server? or something else. The deal can hardly be making much profit for HPE, and it may be that they were honouring a commitment and to quietly drop it with little take up after a short period.
At the same time it must improve its channel relationships. It is currently introducing new programmes into the channel where it has said it wants to raise the bar in terms of training and awareness. It also wants to help its partners compete in both the on-premises market and cloud sales. While the BOGOF deal is part of the old programmes it is clear that HPE has a significant challenge on its hands.
Let’s hope that going forward HPE can sort out its channel otherwise problems like this will just make it easier for competitors like Dell to take market share from them.
I know i am a bit late, but it would seem we now have the back end of these servers in RSA, with support being terrible, if not A JOKE, and after 2 months, still having issues with a HPE Proliant DL160 Gen9, Intel Xeon E5-2603v3, 8GB RAM, 4 LFF HDD, 550W PSU. Ours did however come with 2 x 1TB SATA HDD’s (HP BRANDED) but they were not the same spec as per parts catilogue. HP tried to pass blame, first to us for adding extra none HP HDDs that came from the previous HP ML150 G3 that crashed, after SCSI BUS FAULTS had already occured (Yes SCSI on a SATA only B140i SERVER) on the server before my other HDDs were inserted. They then attempted to blame the HP Certified Supplier, about the drives being different parts, and now they blame OUR SOFTWARE, we purchase a HPE Server to run our SOFTWARE, not make SOFTWARE to run a SERVER???
We even added the extended 3 year NBD warranty, and technicians have come 5 times so far, and replaced:
2 x Motherboards
2 x HDD’s
1 x Backplane
To be done:
1 x Fresh reinstall, on our time, with HPE just doing the RAID and first steps (which the Provisioning had done before, so they telling us that does not work correctly.)
1 x PSU, which after board replacement 1 started making noises that were not normal electrical noises from a PSU.
Who can we go to with this information, we dont want this rubbish, the downtime is destroying the company and the time i myself have to spend on this, AFTER PAYING HPE for EXTENDED WARRANTIES, is destroying my business as well. HPE Support dont seem worried at all, and still try pass blame.
ALL WE WANT IS A WORKING SERVER, WE DONT CARE HOW OR WHO BLAMED WHO, WE JUST NEED WHAT WE PAID FOR, AND HAVE TOLD HPE FOR 7 WEEKS NOW.
As per my previous comment, which was still new then, this issue proceeded to get worse, with HPE taking this server to test, but not offering the client a replacement or even a loan server, and only after i had complained and then purchased a refurbished server for the client to loan until the new server was working (since obviously we are the reseller, and look bad usually are even seen as worse than the manufacturer since these items are sold on our recommendations).
Longer addition made short, so HPE collected the DL160 Gen9, and on their reformat and all, there were still issues, they then offered an identical HPE DL180 Gen9 server, not on the BOGOF list of servers, and also which at the start, we had wanted a DL180 Gen9 server, but were told there was no stock available, the new catch, only 1 HDD not 2 as per our previous model, as well as a wait for the new server. Since we had purchased the loan refurbished server, which was working perfectly from the day installed to the day they moved to their new server, even with old HDD’s (server came with 3 x 72GB 150000RPM SAS and 3 x 300GB 10000RPM SAS drives, all being old and having high hours, i setup 2 x RAID 1 with hot spare, the faster 72GB drives for OS and the 300GB for user data) which had some errors on, one even showing some SCSI Bus Faults but not increasing numbers, and is EXPECTED for a SAS so SCSI HDD, the server was fast and worked more than expected for what was needed, in fact the client offered to purchase it back from us, but since HPE had taken the NEW Server + wait time for the NEW REPLACEMENT server, we had already offered it to another client who was having hardware issues as well.
So, what do you all think happened with the new replacement HPE DL180 Gen9 Server, with a different model HPE Smart Array Controller, being a HPE H240 Smart Array Controller (12GB SAS, but 6GB SATA so the SATA for both is the same controller), and not the HPE B140i Dynamic Array Controller (6GB SATA Only and all cache is on the SYSTEM RAM not CONTROLLER RAM as none is included), well the HPE technician, reinstalled our copy of Windows Server 2012 R2, and straight after this new fresh install on fresh brand new HPE HW, with his own install media not the same as my media, he started encountering SCSI BUS FAULTS as well, also only with SATA HDD’s installed, yet this was then not a SATA only server, as the controller now supported SAS.
Due to the EXACT same HARDWARE ERRORS, on a server which did not have that HARDWARE as well as could not even SUPPORT it, then replicating themselves, on a brand new server, with not even the same range of Array Controller, since the B140i is Dynamic, and the H240 is Smart, HPE then had to install a P440 (i an not even sure if it was a P440 or a P440ar model, which may also be intersting since the one would be an on-board replacement controller, so if a P440, extra PCIe card controller was installed, instead of a P440ar On-board controller, would the P440ar, ALSO HAVE ERRORS????)
When they finally returned the new replacement HPE DL180 Gen9, we also noticed they had doubled up on everything, so 4 HDD’s instead of the original 2 HDD’s but all SATA, then they added a new identical CPU, which included RAM of the same amount as the original CPU so 16GB, which means this was not doubled, but the client will in future need to buy 2 x RAM DIMMs for an upgrade, to keep RAM per CPU identical, which is a small issue that we cant really complain about. They had originally also, not restarted the extended + original warranty, but since i complained more, since original was still branded HP, as well as the loss of the 6 MONTHS that the whole case had taken although a NBD + Extended NBD agreement was purchased, HPE has now said they have changed this, although i still see the original NBD + original DL160 Gen9 on the support login page, as if i am not added to the new agreements.
And to add new insult to injury, this not for HPE itself, but for the HP brand, with a new HP Laserjet Pro M426fdn being sold and supplied to another client, which was sold in November, and due to holidays and the holiday season, although on paper it was 2 months since day is was invoiced at my supplier to the day i called HP support, the actual usage time was just over 1 month, and this would mean they should look at a RMA for out of box failure, as the scanner not only could not take more than 3 pages, without the second page getting stuck and crumpling into itself almost so bad the original scanned invoices we were attempting to scan, almost were not worth keeping, and then it would start on the 3rd page, and only fail as it started crumpling up. I had tried a FW update in December as well, which added much worse scanning quality where we could almost not read the invoice details as well as most colour was almost all removed compared to the scans before the FW update.
The HP techician who was sent to see this problem (since this printer too, had a 1 year NBD warranty attached to it, included in the purchase) which had slightly improved after the FW update (crumpling issue not quality as it was worse after new FW), i can agree to that, but still was there maybe on 5th or 6th page now, well he informed me that you cant revert the FW, and then downloaded the identical FW update and installed it before he replaced the ADF. After replacing the ADF, i became aware of the issue, that was also there before, but i had missed, where all boarders not around our paper, (invoices are printed on 2-part US STD Fanfold paper, so with the holes for the dot matrix paper tractor is wider than A4 but shorter) so where the white backing should be covering, AND ONLY ON NON-ADF scan’s, which we had never tested as we needed batch scan’s while still setting up, but which would have been needed for faxing as well as scan to email, well, all the TOP and RIGHT borders before ADF replacement had a black line, as if the backing let light escape, and then after ADF replacement, the TOP only had a now larger black line, which seems to fall on deaf ears with the technician and HP support, yet i am sure we all know, if we scan say a book, with the top cover still open even a fraction, there will be black printed / scanned wherever the light escapes from the scan. Its almost GENERAL KNOWLEDGE even.
For this new issue, HP then sent a REPLACEMENT PRINTER, which when received, in a different box not a HP branded product box, and after being unpacked, i instantly noticed a side cover not even installed correctly as well as it being DIRTY, then i noticed a sticker stating REFURBISHED and a sticker by the power stating TESTED. We cant accept possibly a 2 years + printer, for something brand new, i dont care how tested it is, if it was on a rebuy offer, 2 years use is a long time, why replace junk with junk.
On that, i will now see tomorrow, what happens, as i am meeting a technician there again, i have stated to HP that if there is no NEW printer, working there tomorrow, we want a full refund with damages, so who knows what is going to happen. Will update when i know.