Sorry to hear you had bad experiences with PA. I only used them once, for the circling restriction removal, and it was just fine. That being said, I have only ever heard positives about HPA, so I am sure they are a great way to go.
While I have never been through an HPA program, I was just at their facility back in April/May for new-hire training and used the A320 sim. It is one of the newest, and quite possibly the newest, A320 simulator in the world. It has the new electric motion system installed and it is a very nice simulator.