I replaced my crappy HP L7780 Officejet All-in-One with a Brother MFC-9840CDW.
The HP cost me $450. The Brother was almost $600 (thanks to eBay)
I can’t even begin to tell you how worth it that extra $150 is.
Color, Laser, All-in-one.
FAST — 21pp/min no matter what
QUIETER than the HP
And without a moving printhead, it doesn’t make my desk act like it’s in an earthquake.
GET THIS printer!
So, I ask the case manager if they’ll at least send me ink cartridges to replace all the ones I burned through while following their “testing” procedure.
They agree to send me the HP 88 XL (extra large) ink cartridges — Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black.
They send me the regular instead of the XL.
I fax them and tell them what they did. They call me and promise to correct the error.
They send another batch… to the wrong address (even though my correct address was in my account and on my fax).
I drive to Denver to pick up the package (the woman who got it opened it up so UPS wouldn’t return it).
ANOTHER batch of regular instead of XL!
I fax again, basically asking how far up their butts they must have their heads to screw up something as simple as this.
They finally send me the right HP 88 XL ink cartridges.
Of course, since they won’t support my printer any more, they’re ALL a waste.
So, check this out… after HP agrees to give me the MONEY to buy a new router, one that is compatible with their printer, and to send me some ink to replace all that I used in the repeated setups, I’m left with a printer that’s a lemon!
This is the 7th HP Officejet Pro L7780 All-in-One that they’ve sent me. The last 4 have been refurbs.
This one has problem with the paper feed, and it randomly goes offline for no apparent reason.
So, I call my case manager and ask him what to do, given that the refurb has a 90-day warranty.
He says, “We’re no longer supporting your printers.”
“WHAT?!”
“We’ve done everything we can and we’ve sent you 7 printers.”
“But,” I said, “you’ve only sent me 7 printers because you were pretending that the printer was the problem, when it was ALWAYS a firmware issue… now, I have an ACTUAL LEMON and you won’t fix the problem?!”
“Correct. We’ll buy the printer back from you.”
“Huh?”
“Send us the printer and a copy of the receipt and we’ll send you the purchase price… MINUS the tax.”
Can you say “You have got to be kidding?”
The biggest problem with the L7780 is that there’s nothing else out there to replace it with!
Actually, that’s not true. The biggest problem is that HP has released a product with a TON of fix-able bugs and, in over a year they haven’t fixed them. And, worse, many of these are KNOWN problems that they won’t reveal to you until you’ve spent DAYS on the phone with Hewlett-Packard’s support monkeys, who make you jump through the stupidest hoops known to man (can you say, “Move your printer to another room so we can make sure the electricity isn’t a problem”).
More stunning is the expensive (for them) “solution” of shipping out replacement printers… even though it’s a FIRMWARE problem not a hardware problem that’s the issue.
And, of course, this “solution” is massively expensive for the user, because setting up one of these HP L7780s can take 3 hours, easily — 20-30 min for the printer to initialize, 2+ hours for the bloatware software to install itself (and tons of crap you don’t need) onto your computer.
HP’s “Case Managers” are supposed to be the last resort for help; they’ll even tell you that there’s nobody above them to talk to… if they tell you that, they are lying directly to your face. And while they have the power to do *some* things, they seem not to have enough power to actually satisfy a customer.
I had one argument with my case manager, where he was offering to send me some ink cartridges to make up for the pain in the ass I’ve been going through… he claimed the value of the ink cartridges was about $80… even though the price on eBay is about $40, and if you use some coupons at OfficeMax or Staples, you can get them for about $20.
I told the CM that his offer was unacceptable, especially given the street price of the ink. He said he felt that it was a good offer.
I replied, “I don’t care what you FEEL; it’s a shitty offer. Besides, you clearly don’t care what I FEEL, so why should I care what you feel?”
I must say, I was impressed that he realized the double-standard and, at least for that moment, shut up.
Frankly, I can’t imagine HP will ever be able to compensate me for the time, effort, and frustration they’ve put me through — much of it documented, below.
And given that they’re selling a product with KNOWN defects, I think a class-action lawsuit is in order.
Seriously, this last L7780 printer HP sent is a dud. Here’s the latest:
The problem with the WRT54G is “fixed” (by getting a new router, which HP says they are reimbursing me for… once the check shows up and clears I’ll let you know if that happened).
Trying to install the software on 2 different computers, it will SOMETIMES install the FAX driver and sometimes not.
Then, after I got it installed, I’d see the drivers for the printer go offline for no reason. Then back online again for no reason.
Then I turned on my computer and there were, suddenly, NO DRIVERS listed in “Printers & Faxes.” None. Gone.
So, I reinstalled the drivers.
The printer driver installed just fine.
But after the install software added the FAX driver, 5 seconds later it added another. And then 5 seconds later, another… and another and another and another.
I rebooted my computer and when it turned on, every 5 seconds there was yet another FAX driver added.
Once again, I did a “Level 3 uninstall.”
And then I called HP who had VERY interesting (and by “interesting” I mean “Are you SERIOUS?!”) news…
In a nutshell, I would avoid this printer.
Read this blog to find out why.
I’ve probably wasted 2 weeks of my life dealing with the L7780 problems and the horrible tech support.
Here’s a review from Tiger Direct.
It’s true, all the features are really cool… IF THEY WORKED!
My Direct Filing didn’t work for a year (until they sent me my 4th printer).
Faxing from computer stopped working suddenly… and took 16 hours of reinstalling software until it would work again.
In other words, don’t believe everything you see/hear about how great this printer is.
Okay, it’s official. The most recent (the SIXTH) HP L7780 that HP has sent me is a dud.
After getting the software installed, and finally seeing both the printer driver and the fax driver, if I look in Printers & FAXes, I’ll see the printer just go offline every now and then, for no apparent reason. And then, just as randomly, it’ll come back online.
I’ve never seen anything like this.
Thanks to a kind switchboard operator at HP, I was able to bypass my case manager and get one level higher in the food chain.
After a week of back-and-forth phone calls — where my admonition to “call me on my CELL PHONE” apparently never made it to the right person, since I kept getting voicemails on my HOME phone — the case manager’s boss said to the case manager:
Am I understanding correctly that the L7780 is incompatible with the Linksys WRT54G router?
Yes, the CM answered.
And is it also correct that we don’t publish this on a spec sheet anywhere?
Correct, the CM answered.
Then the appropriate thing to do is reimburse Mr. Sashen for a router that WILL work with our printer.
And, I added, the ink cartridges that I wasted by repeatedly going through the useless restarting of the printer.
Agreed.
And so, the first step toward a resolution.
Now, that said, the printer still has a number of software glitches, including that you can use the Digital Filing button to send scanned images directly to your computer, but if you use the menus to do the EXACT SAME process, you get a “communications error” and the feature doesn’t work.
In other words, HP, by not revealing a known hardware incompatibility before, and often after, purchase… is essentially lying to consumers.
Avoid the HP Officejet L7780