On April 27th, 2007, I bought an HP Officejet Pro L7780 All-in-one printer, fax, copier, scanner.
In the 25 years I’ve been involved with electronics and computers, this decision has led to, by far, the worst hardware and customer service experience I’ve ever had.
I hope to dissuade you from making the same hellish decision I made and spare you from the nightmare I’ve been living.
The following posts will tell the story
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?”
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.
So, I have the router issue fixed, but HP has been sending me REFURBISHED printers every time they think that I need a new printer.
They’ve sent me 6, I believe.
Now, they never needed to send me ANY because the problem was a known FIRMWARE issue, not a problem with hardware. But, leaving that for a moment…
The last refurbished L7780 they sent me SUCKS! During setup, it kept eating paper… and it still will have paper jams, which I NEVER had in the year I owned the previous units they sent me.
And when I install the software, the Fax drivers will only intermittently install.
I need to do a “level 3 uninstall” and then reinstall the software to test this (which takes about 3 hours, total) and, each time I get a different result.
My suspicion is that, for the first time, there actually is a problem with this particular printer!
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.
HP’s “offer” to me is:
Go buy another router and then we’ll give you some ink cartridges worth $100.
Too bad that’s the RETAIL price of the cartridges and that the STREET price is about $20… which is $30-80 less than the cost of the new router they want me to buy.
Here’s the problem:
HP knows that the L7780 does not work with the Linksys WRT54G.
BUT, they don’t tell you this before you purchase — there’s nothing on their website warning you about the incompatibility.
Further, AFTER you buy, you have to go through HOURS AND HOURS of time dealing with Tech Support people who have not been told about this problem… so they make you do stupid things like “move the printer to another room to make sure you have good electricity.”
EVENTUALLY, you may find a senior support person who knows about the problem. They’ll tell you that it’s a known issue and that HP will provide a fix in the near future.
That fix never comes.
Then, here’s the kicker, HP says the only “solution” is to go spend money to get a new router.
See, what they don’t understand is: Had they provided the information that they KNEW, I wouldn’t need a new router… because I would have returned the piece of crap printer and not been forced to spend almost a week dealing with their low-level tech support people… who COULD HAVE BEEN informed about this issue (how hard is it to build into their scripts: “Oh, you’re having wireless networking problems… do you have the WRT54G router?”)
So, last week I got a message (because HP called my landline, when I asked them to call me on my cell instead), and said, “So, it seems like this problem will be fixed if you just upgrade the firmware on your router, the printer and have the latest XP service pack.”
I nearly went through the roof.
This is the same cock-and-bull story I was told A YEAR AGO!
It wasn’t true then and it isn’t true now.
I have the latest of everything one can have the latest of.
That does not fix SOFTWARE (firmware) problems in the HP L7780.
Avoid the HP Officejet L7780