I have a voice

I am beyond pissed.  If you know me, you already know it takes a massive amount to get me truly pissed.  Hewlett Packard has managed to do it.  Here’s the deal.

I replaced my old HP printer (PCS1210v) with a new HP F4235 sometime last year.  I don’t print a lot but since I bought this printer I have had nothing but trouble.  First off, the cartridges are NOT refillable (a cardinal sin in my book), the software that must install when the installation software runs includes lots of total crap I don’t want, don’t need and will never use.  The HP update software is beyond annoying and every time I want to use the printer I have to uninstall and reinstall it.  But that’s not the worst.  Are you ready for this?

I go to the HP site to get help.  The first thing I try is diagnostic software which told me exactly what I already knew.  Isn’t that special.  Then I tried their chat help.  Did you know HP’s chat software (the only help you can get without paying for support) is non-functional?  I’ve used chat software before.  I occasionally talk to the Hostgator support staff via chat with no problems but when it came to HP’s version of chat software it turns out it doesn’t run on any version of Firefox after version 2.  (I am now running ver5.)  What’s up with that?  So I try using it in IE.  Everything should run in IE, right?  NOT!  I went through the chat setup process FOUR times, got the same javascript error FOUR times. “Object expected LiveCustomerServlet.egain Code:0 URI: https://wimpro.cce.hp.com/system/LiveCustomerServlet.egain”.  Do you realize I would have to PAY HP to tell them their software isn’t working?  How’s that for awesome customer service.  Norstrom they aren’t.

So I go to the HP printer forum to try and figure out why my computer can see my printer but my printer won’t run a self-test or print anything from the computer.  Did you know the HP forum has a cute little logo with two little green hands around “HP Total Care”.  If that’s not false advertising I don’t know what is.  A search on my printer model brings up desktop posts, laserjet posts and inkjet printer posts that aren’t my model and have nothing to do with my request.  Pages and pages of posts that have nothing to do with what I have questions about.  It looks like their search algorithm is as outdated as their chat software.

So there you have it, the reason I will never buy anything HP again.  I’m going to chuck this printer and purchase another manufacturer’s product, a manufacturer who actually has online support that’s functional, accessible and topical, a manufacturer who doesn’t hold their customers hostage to ridiculous ink cartridge prices, a manufacturer with refillable cartridges.  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.