HP8500 is unreliable! Tech Support is even worse!

[SaavyShopper]

UNRELIABLE!  I've spent months trouble shooting error messages and trying to resolve printer problems. This model is just a bad design AND the replacement printer was even worse. I'm trying to get a SECOND replacement printer and Tech Support is just a waste of time with nothing but false promises!

Cut your losses--return the printer if you can. Don't buy any more ink or waste your valuable time trouble shooting problems. Even when the printer works, it doesn't work well or as advertised.  These problems never go away they just waste your time and make you crazy. 

The most horrible experience I've had with any hardware and any printer! WASTE OF TIME and MONEY! I'm constantly replacing cartridges, cleaning the print head, checking for updates for the driver, updating the firmware, and searching the HP web site for resolutions. And Tech Support is just a total waste of time!

Whenever I click on PRINT, I pray the job starts and finishes. And if it does start, then I sit by the printer babysitting the paper feed and hoping my paper doesn't get stuck, mangled or smudged.

Examples:

• "Paper tray is empty" - there's paper in the tray so you have to constantly stop and reload the tray (15 times for a 15 page print job) OR you manually feed paper and the printer mangles your expensive paper.
• "Missing or damaged ink cartridge" - all new ink cartridges are installed. The HP website doesn't even list this error. "Missing or damaged print head", so you clean the print head and the problem is still not resolved.
• "Cartridge is empty" -- but you just installed a new cartridge (and spent $100 on new cartridges)
• Automatic duplex printing doesn't print the back page correctly--the page doesn't print as previewed. The margins are off.
• Scanning documents to the computer just stops working (wireless laptop or hard-wired desktop). Error message says to review the documentation.  You end up scanning to a USB flash drive and then uploading your images to the hard drive. 

And a lot of other bogus error messages....

And in between the error messages, the printer is re-aligning and checking status and telling you to wait while it creaks and chugs and sounds like it's going to fall apart, while you wait and pray it will print your job.

Don't try to print for a deadline, the printer will surely fail. It's faster to route or take your print job to Kinkos!

[Nonsense]

8500 Officejet Pro AiO Wireless.  Still under warranty, in the last week and a half I have spent over 9 hours with 7 different people in tech support.  I contacted them initially because when you scanned a document to file it was huge, its output size was gigantic, and the resize output option tab was always gray and never available.  Every single person I talked to continuously thanked me for my patience and had me do the same exact thing - diagnostics, remove everything HP from my computer, reinstall everything.

Problem was, from the very first uninstall and reinstall, they created a different problem.   All of my scan to destinations disappeared.  You would go to scan, scan to and in the destinations file NOTHING.  So we uninstalled and reinstalled 7 times, with everyone I spoke with extremely difficult to understand, and having to repeat myself constantly.  It was very clear they all sat in a class somewhere and were taught the same basic crap information with no real knowledge of how anything works.  And constantly thanking me for my patience and repeating the same bs out of each and every mouth.

I gave one of the tech's, and I use that term loosely, remote access to my computer.  He spent 2 1/2 hours uninstalling and reinstalling with complete access to my computer.  Same result.  He gave me a ticket # and said I would get a call back from the "next level of support".  No call-back.  I call them.  Give them the ticket number.  They tell me that request has been closed.  I said I have not been given a solution.  He said the tech I spoke with for 2 1/2 hours and gave full access to my system noted that I had called with a question, and that was all he said in his notes.  He didn't say he had full access to my system, or that he and uninstalled and reinstalled everything HP, or that he had promised me a person with further knowledge would call me with the solution.  Now I am wondering if this person is going to commit identity theft against me because he had access to my system, and nowhere in the HP mess does it state that he accessed my system.  Total lack of accountability on HP's part and obviously not monitored by anyone.  They put me at great personal risk by allowing this very dangerous practice.

Today's latest person told me he was going to send me a new printer and that a supervisor would call me back to confirm this.  That was 10 hours ago.  Still can't scan, still have the problem HP created on my machine, still have no solution.

Myy initial problem is well documented on the internet by hundreds of other users of this same machine, and none of the sites nor HP has a solution, nor does HP seem in any danger of caring to find a solution.  Stay tuned