- In 2005, they had one printer that refused to print if the cartridge was past a certain date, even if full. Several also underestimated the volume of ink in cartridges and told you it was empty when not.
- In 2007, HP refused to honor hardware warranty if you install any other OS on their laptop.
- in 2010, HP refused to provide drivers for the new windows Vista for its old ScanJet scanners (linux worked fine though).
- in 2020 they hardcoded the path to the EFI of their laptop to be windows only.
That's just the examples I could easily google, I remember that HP was having one scandal every 6 months in 2000, and we didn't have twitter back then.
So if a brand has been very publicly misbehaving for 2 decades, how does it still have customers?
Well, Facebook has still a billion users. Microsoft is now considered the father of unicorns and rainbows. Oracle is still making banks, one of my biggest client just migrated to it.
So the so-called cancel culture seems very superficial to me: lots of noise, but very actual consumer behavioral change. The brands can get away with anything and thrive. Maybe they'll get a little bit of heat for a few months on social media, so what?
But the bottom line is: if you are a big company, just do whatever makes you money. You don't need reputation.