When the HP Officejet Pro 8500A was launched, we rejoiced.  It looked like a really good product, fast, feature packed, web ready, new pigment inks, the whole deal, even reasonably economical so we ordered one.  Bear in mind this was over a year ago.  It arrived and we set it up.  Sure enough it performed really well right up till the point a few days later when it didn’t.  I just thought there was a gremlin in our network and thought nothing of it at the time.  The problem was really weird.  It did not matter if the device was connected by USB, wireless or wired network, the issue happened with all three.   Send a print job, the printer’s little LCD screen would light up and display the message “Now Printing”, but that was it.  No mechanical noises whatsoever, no attempt to feed paper, and no response from the keypad.  Only the off button functioned.  On power-up the printer would work again for a while, then the same thing would happen.  Most frustrating.

Anyway as I said, I just put this down to a gremlin in our network so we began supplying these printers to our clients because they just ticked all the boxes and there was nothing to compare to them on the market at the time.

That is when the problems began.  Not all of the 8500A’s we supplied failed but more than half did exactly the same thing as our one.

HP customer support has, in their defense been pretty good over the years so I began calling them on behalf of our clients about this issue.  To date over a year later there has been no resoulution to this problem and I must have made well over 100 calls to HP.  Invariably, after a very long drawn out session of diagnostic testing on the phone involving entering secret menus not in the product manual and resetting all sorts of things, the problem still remained and HP to their credit, eventually replaced the faulty unit.

It does not end there though.  They refuse to admit that there is an issue with this product even though I have found a large number of other disgruntled consumers registering their disgust electronically, even on HP’s own forum.

The real killer though is that on a number of occasions the replacement machine also failed in exactly the same way and the whole process had to be repeated in order to acquire my client a third machine.  So far all the three’s are working normally, on the same networks, with the same software.  Hmmmmmm?

The only logical assumption I can make, given that I cannot find any common factor in all these cases such as the same router or OS version etc. is that there must be sub-standard components in these machines that are failing and HP is quietly replacing the ones from those who shout loudest with fully tested machines.

I have found that in some cases, opening the cartridge door and closing it again will release the current print job only, but the problem still persists with subsequent jobs, so you have to open the door for every document.

I phoned them with the serial numbers of 10 machines they had replaced and asked to speak with their complaints department.  The refused to connect me.  I wonder why?

Anyway, my advice is to avoid this product and go with the Epson Workforce Pro, a whole other league above this poor offering from HP.

OFT and Trading Standards investigate Lexmark

According to a number of industry bloggers, Lexmark is under investigation by both the British Office of Fair Trading and the Trading Standards Institute after a firmware update was released that prevents third party and refilled inkjet cartridges from being used in Lexmark printers.

A number of consumers have reportedly complained to the two advisory bodies after noticing that the latest firmware update for their inkjet printers prevented them from using cartridges that were not Lexmark originals.

However Trading Standards told The Recycler: “we don’t deal with investigations into businesses”, and that it may be the case that a local authority is separately dealing with the complaints against Lexmark.

When contacted, the Office of Fair Trading stated that it does not give out any information about ongoing complaints against companies and Lexmark declined to comment.

This issue has serious implications for the aftermarket – the OEM seems to have made a move towards shutting its printers and cartridges off from remanufactured and refilled cartridges. However, taking this step may also land Lexmark in serious trouble with the British authorities for cutting off its aftermarket competition.

The OEM has been involved in a series of moves that may suggest it is trying to shut out the aftermarket, including patenting an anti-remanufacturing device, and contesting a longlegal trial with Static Control over the past few years.

Samsung has alsobeen criticised for updating its chip technologies in an alleged attempt to block the use of remanufactured cartridges in its printers.

Have you experienced this issue first-hand? If so, please comment.

Our recommendation is that you take this seriously and avoid buying one of these products for the time being.  We have long suspected that this practice has been going on.  It is the only logical way to explain the behaviour of a number of printers rejecting 3rd party cartridges  brought to our attention by customers.

Check out my post of July last year, “Cartridge Alert for Epson Printers“

Hello all, watch this space, Top 10 hints and tips to save money with your printer, coming soon!

Will you sad morons out there please stop inundating this blog with rubbish.  Currently there are over 100 comments like the followong gibberish awaiting my delete button.

“I appreciate you for ones piece of writing. It subject matter pursuits me quite definitely together with using you will, Document uncovered different stuff. Previously quite interesting. Thanks a lot. Bravo. You live.”

The thing that really annoys me is that I am unable to return the favor and respond with hundreds of rubbish emails because they all bounce back.  I may even start a new topic called the top 10 most ridiculous comments.  I’d bet that I get comments on this post that claim how wonderful the content is.  If I do I’ll name and shame the pertpetrators.

It is beyond me why any sane person would purchase a low price Epson printer.  Not because they are no good, they are a really nice product but due to the cost of actually using one.  In other posts I have suggested that using third party cartridges or copies is a good way of reducing the cost, providing you purchase good ones.  Here at Fillink we do sell the good ones and a delivery of new stock arrived today.  The sneaky little electronic chips Epson use to make it difficult to make these products have until now been vanquished by the version 5 circuits on our third party cartridges.  This new delivery however has version 6 chips.  This can only mean that our suppliers have got wind of the fact that, either new Epson printers will not accept version 5 chips or there is an updated driver now available that renders version 5 chips unusable or worse, both.  Beware, do not update the driver for your Epson printer and do not purchase version 5 chipped cartridges for your recently purchased printer.

The most common current Epson cartridges on the market today by far are the to711, to712, to713 and to714, black, yellow, cyan and magenta.

Most of our Epson customers use them.  Cartridges of this type are able to contain a little under 20ml of ink.  A year ago we noticed that they only contained 14ml and recently only 7.4ml in the black and 5.5 in the colour.

This means that Epson has been stealthily increasing the price of these cartridges without you noticing by reducing the amount of ink.  Typically they cost around £12 each.  Compare this to ours containing 19ml at £5 and you can see just how much you are being ripped off.

It has just come to our attention that canon printers that are sold with the 37 black and 38 colour low capacity cartridges should be able to use the 40 black and 41 colour high capacity cartridges. They are the same size but if you remove the lid of the low capacity one you find that half of the internal volume is used up by a huge lid. Many of our customers have returned either the black or colour XL cartridges claiming that they are being rejected by the printer and we have obliged with a refund in all cases.
Today a customer brought her printer to us and we observed that the printer did indeed reject the cartridge but, and here is the shocker, only if you mix the low and hi capacity cartridges. When we replaced both the low capacity cartridges with high capacity ones they worked!

Inkjet printers waste a lot of ink. The following video from youtube illustrates this beautifully. The conclusion is not quite correct however. Some printers waste more than others. We have found that HP and Brother printers are by far the most efficient in their usage of ink, only using a few percent in their maintenence cycles. Epson and Cannon printers can waste up to half of the ink you purchase. There is a way to reset this Epson problem for free with some clever software you can download from this blog.  Click here to read the info.

During a recent visit to a major IT retailer I was amased by the number of people proudly queueing up to purchase a new printer. I found myself thinking, “how can they still not know in 2010 that they are being ripped off.” I felt like standing outside the store with a board pointing to my shop. Had I done this I am sure I would have been moved on because the store manager would know the truth of it. That customers purchase a “so-called” cheap printer only to find out to their cost later that the replacement cartridges are astronomically expensive. I have heard the cost of printer ink compared to that of unicorn blood. I am certain that no argument attempting to justify cartridge prices that these retail outlets care to make, would stand up for 1 second against our Continuink printers and ink. Please check out your options with us before you make an expensive mistake. One free phone call could well save you £100′s. Even if you don’t end up purchasing one of our products we will happily advise you on what’s good and what’s not for free. Call us on 0800 849 6344.