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

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!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=130231031909

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=130231032224

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=130231032928

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=130231168117

To avoid a lawsuit!

I caught them red-handed in a legally indefensible place — they are knowingly selling a product with a known incompatibility that causes customers tons of wasted time, effort, and money. They are deliberately not revealing this information (not only to the customer, but they don’t tell their tech support people either!), costing the customer more wasted time and money. And they don’t publish this information ANYWHERE.

But, if they buy my printer back from me, I don’t have much of a leg to stand on in a lawsuit.

Clever move, guys and gals.

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.

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?”

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.

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…

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.

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.