HP Playing Dirty Tricks? - Comments Page 2

My HP PSC1610 printer has stood idle for four years: since I tried to put remanufactured ink in it. Rejected!
I had hardly used it in the year before then; although our schoolkids managed to use all the ink.
On principle, I WILL NOT pay extortionate HP ink prices: I could have bought a new cheap-o printer for less!
I also couldn't be bothered with looking for a work-around, for the little use I need.
So, I opted to use a local stationery/print shop, or ask a friend; for the mere twenty or so A4 pages I've needed since then.
Go jump at yourself, HP!

Dumped Lexmark for the PRICE of their cartridges and also the HP's for their trickery. Found an Epson T22 for color prints using cartridges from HongKong ($24) that are refillable and I make very few color prints. My Canon 420 laser B&W is a dream... Canon cartridges cost $79 but the non-Canon ones are only $11.32 for 4,000 pages... and then it says "Out of Toner" but continues to print perfectly for 3 additional months without shutting down! Same with my Panasonic Lumix camera... they want you to update firmware that will oblige you to buy their $40 batteries when the $9 ones work just as well or better. I don't like being tricked by greedy companies!

I , unfortunately, have a HP envy all in one. Pls tell me how I can turn off any automatic updates from HP?

I have been using the LP ink and am verybhapoybwith it and the $ it saves!

It's a dirty little practice that is industry wide. I have a Toshiba laptop that won't tell me how much power is left in my battery because I use a third party battery.

I would think a good lawyer could file a class action suit and make this practice too expensive to continue.

I have been down the old Proprietary road with several EPSON Printers, starting with the 2400, 2800, Now with my second 3880, My business is centered around fast turn around service.
I tried a product from China that sold a complete refill set, Invested $1500.00 dollars, and a lot of great salesmanship from the very Nice owner.
The Piece of CRAP never worked, The instant the ink was introduced my equipment Quality Nose dived. Now use only Epson force fed Ink, $60.00 a pop. No trouble at all, Have learned from watching You Tube how to remedy a lot of Ink cleaning problems. Would desperately like to find another source. Epson is discontinuing the 3880, For their benifit of course. That ink price is the biggest fly in the Ointment for me. Lots of ink Mfgrs, all spell some kind of remedy and guarantee, But are also very Costly, Some one some day will some how Pop the Bubble on this Ink Monopoly and make a great playing field for all of us. B.Potter.

In other words, HP has not changed in the past 19 years? Is that why I use an Epson? Hazel

My Kodak printer has served me very well but is getting quite old now--still working pretty darned good. However, it will one day no longer be functional. I had very seriously considered a HP printer. Based on all these comments, I do think that I do not ever want to be a customer of HP--on any level. (I really wish I still had my old Dell A24 printer. Oh well.)

Sounds like Apple's latest ploy. Any customers who had their i-phone repaired by a non-authorized Apple dealer experienced a bricked phone after the latest OS update. I understand Apple lost a class action suit for doing so.

Had the same issue with my Brother MFC-J47DW. I did not get any help from Brother but LD was great. They replaced the cartridges with some that had some kind of metal thing on top that was new. Works great. But they could not replace all the ones I had stocked. This sucks, but I refuse to get another high dollar printer. I went out and bought a $29 HP and get my cartridges from LD as always. If the printer quits, I can afford to replace it.

Well Bob I highly suspect that HP are pulling a Volkswagen emission type scam with this one fiddling the firmware.

IMO HP executive should begin to feel very very nervous if they aren't already as I foresee astute investigative class action lawyers salivating at the prospects of a huge payday.

I have HP Photosmart 6520, wireless. Will never purchase another HP product because of the problems with this printer. I too got the drop down a few weeks ago telling me I was not using HP ink. My printer stopped working in the middle of a project for this announcement. I was asked if I had purchased HP replacement ink, if so I needed to contact my supplier & inform them my ink refill was compromised. I stated "yes" my refill was HP. Like magic, my printer started working again & has continued to work ever since.

Like several other posters have already stated, I would NEVER buy an HP product, be it printer or laptop, nor do I EVER recommend HP products to my clients (IT Consultant, 25yrs+). That being said, I gave up on the whole inkjet printer game years ago and went all laser (I have a separate scanner and Fax machine). I recently purchased a new B&W, B*****r (been using B*****r for 10yrs now), Duplex, Wireless printer for about $80. The toner cartridges last forever (and even OEM are only about $50), AND, there's no inkjets to clog ...

We have found that one should NOT accept firmware updates from printer OEM's. Install printer from supplied CD, and only install software essential to printer function, block ALL communication in your firewall, set the printer NOT to start with Windows.
The printer OEM's use several tricks to monitor your usage, by way of installed software and monitored updates. I only use Epson products and have figured their schemes out. As of yet, there is NO way to roll the printer firmware back. At that point, you're stuck with using OEM ink sources.

I had a similar scare a couple of months ago with my Epson printer. It said my black cartridge needed replacing, and wouldn't let me print anything until I'd done so. Normally I ignore such "out of ink" warnings, which tend to be very conservative and leave lots of ink still in the cartridge. I prefer to wait until I see that my printouts are actually fading before I replace a cartridge.

So I did some googling and learned that recent Epson printer updates could irreversibly lock out third-party-vendor ink. The good news is that my printer really did just need another black ink cartridge, and when I replaced the empty one with a new (non-Epson) cartridge the printer resumed working.

But since then I have been extremely careful NOT to accept any Epson firmware updates. What do I need a firmware update for anyway? My printer works fine as is. Of course at some time in the future when the printer finally breaks down and I have to buy another one, it is unlikely to be an Epson. Or any other brand that screws its customer base by locking out third party ink vendors.

I ran into the same situation with an older Epson Color printer. They built in a code so the cartridges would be "empty", not the quotes, even though they weren't.

I have always supported and used HP printers until recently. I started with an HP Deskjet 550, which ran for over 15 years. In the end I donated to the chemical lab where I worked because it wasn't being used anymore due to no parallel port at home, and they needed it for some specialized equipment. After that it was large LJ 3si models with millions of miles on them and later LJ 4Sis, 8000n, and so on. Much later my last employer used All-in-one inkjets for C-level management until I recommended another vendor. We were replacing printers fast than the cartridges due to constant QC issues including DOA printers.

My last home HP printer is an LJ2015. Like John mentioned above, I got one of those motherboard failures. People are saying it's due to cold solder joints on the surface mount and to perform some surgery by placing the board in a toaster oven to warm the solder again. I didn't do that and have plugged the printer into my PC locally and it works -- for now. I'll use it until it no longer works.

As far as quality goes with HP products, I wouldn't touch them anymore.

As far as needing a printer, we need them. I didn't use my laser printer until I refinanced and needed to print a gazillion pages of paperwork. Having the laser printer saved me copious trips to Staples.

I have a perfectly good HP 6122 Printer. Never knew anything about automatic updates. Is my unit too old for me to worry about? Like everyone else, ink refills are costly...more than the printer is worth at this point. Bob, if I go to LD Products, will my old machine stop/message pop-up stating "No No No!?"
Thanks

I have a Kodak ESPC315 and use LD Products ink cartridges. I have to press the "OK" button each time I print. Otherwise, the cartridges work just fine.

Hi Bob:

I have a Brother HL-2040 B&W laser printer which I love, but do not use that often. My use of ink toner and paper has been greatly reduced since I have moved to using free CutePDF Writer (http://www.cutepdf.com/). This works together with a convenient filing system I have set up in the Win 7 MyDocuments folder.

Once CutePDF Writer is installed, a new print option is added to your "print menu" which creates a pdf document which can then be named and filed in the appropriate sub-folder in MyDocuments.

If needed, these documents can always be printed - but that situation very rarely happens. The key here is to regularly update your sub-folders as the number of pdf documents expands to facilitate finding or searching. Frequent backups will protect against losing any important documents.

I have the HP 8610 too!
I do not use it much. My workhorse printer is a Canon B&W laser printer. Therefore the 8610 has been OFF for some time. I think I can safely assume that this firmware update was not forced on my printer since it was NOT turned on.

Thanks for your notice about the update. I disconnected the ethernet cable and turned the printer on. I found the setting for AUTO update and turned that OFF. Turned the printer off and reconnected the ethernet cable.That should prevent all future updates happening without my approval!

So does this mean that HP really stands for Hampered Printing? Hapless Products? Hardly Practical? I will stop there. :-)

I purchased and HP8500 a couple of years back, on sale, just over a hundred bucks, bought 1 each extra cartridges, on sale at the same time and got rewards for the cartridges, which were just under eighty dollars. When the cartridges were finally all used up, I bought an HP8600, on sale with extra cartridges, again, all of it right at two hundred dollars. That works out to around a hundred dollars a year. It’s less expensive to have the drug store do my photographs and I almost always use ‘draft’ when printing what little I do print. So every couple of years I get a new printer with full warranty and cartridges and only purchase a new cartridge if I absolutely must. Even those who do print more than I do, could purchase other than manufactures cartridges, until they don’t work, wait for a good sale price and start fresh.