HP is helping its resellers in the UK to be able to identify fake consumables after having 2,000 counterfeits seized in the UK market.
According to Neil Sawyer, HP’s channel sales, education and SMB director for UK & Ireland, counterfeit raids in the consumables market is a priority for HP Inc. this year. Recently, the company’s anti-counterfeit team identified fake cartridges being passed on by a major UK distributor that are not an authorized HP partner. Authorities also raided two more companies for selling counterfeits online.
“We have an absolutely zero-tolerance approach to any counterfeit product as it is extremely damaging to our brand and extremely damaging to our channel partners,” Sawyer said.
HP Inc also launched a website to help end users identify whether their cartridges are bogus by either checking the security label or scanning the QR code.
In order to raise awareness of the dangers of counterfeit kit unwittingly sold by authorized partners, HP Inc also spoke out over the issue. Sawyer said, «We want to make people aware of this, not to discourage people from trading in that market—because 99.9 per cent of our partners are not interested in it—but because we want people to be vigilant just in case it is mixed in with legitimate product and our partners and end customers are getting a rough deal.”
Sawyer further revealed that a further 20,000 fake HP-branded items have been taken off the market across the EU over the past 12-18 months.
“We are absolutely focused on stamping this out with HP’s anti-counterfeit team,” Sawyer said. “But we also want to make sure our channel is aware of this so they can watch out for the tell-tale signs of counterfeit product being offered to them. Often the most alarming indicator is a very cheap price that is too good to be true. If any resellers or distributors are concerned about that then our anti-counterfeit team are available to handle it.»
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