The MBA types often come in and milk a company's good reputation for short-term profits. After the reputation is milked dry, they take their wad of cash and bail out. Similar happened to IBM's consulting division when they strongly enforced short-term profit goals. Customers got nickled and dimed, and stopped renewing contracts. Good reputations are hard to come by, don't blow them for a quick high.
Then over the years my mental image gradually changed. HP printers weren't reliable workhorses over the complete product line anymore. Then the Windows drivers got bad. Then the inkjet cartridge bullshit. They effectively quit making calculators. Then Carly, then...and now I'm in your boat, where the HP label is equivalent to "made in China, and not the good China, the bad China that uses slave labor and cuts every corner it can find". I now actively avoid HP products.