Constant problems with OfficeJet Pro 8500A - on my third replacement and it's less than a year!

[Greg_Hafer]

Anyone else having problems with this piece of junk?  

I've always had good luck with HP printers at work, so when I needed something more heavy duty for my home office I went to this model.  What a mistake!  

Within a month it stopped feeding all together.  I contacted HP and they sent me a reconditioned printer.  Went thru the entire set up and once again within a month the same issue.  Only paper I use is inkjet paper, nothing else.  Once again, HP support sent another replacement printer.  Now this one has terrible print quality.  Every time I want good copies I need to go thru the print head cleaning routine at least to the third level to get a useable print.  I first thought that maybe my HP ink cartridges had dried or were almost empty.  I replaced with new HP ink cartridges with the same result.  

I'm hesitant to contact HP again because each replacement they sent is worse than the one before.

Extremely dissatisfied and will never buy an HP product or printer again!  I will make sure that anyone I work with or know never buys one.  FYI - I am a systems administrator at our city's hospital system, so I can make sure that there are no more HP purchases.  We presently have 2 hospitals and 17 other remote offices and clinics.

HP you're not the company you once were!

[Gordon_H]

Hi Greg,

Welcome to the HP Consumer Printer Forums.

What model is your printer (A910a, A910g, or A910n)?

[Doolin]

I am glad to see I am not the only person suffering with this sub-standard printer.

I am a retailer and an end user of HP Officejet Pro 8500A models.

Unfortunately, I have recommended & sold several of these unit to my customers along with having purchased one for my own use. Like you I was a big HP fan, no longer. Again like you, my own 8500 has been replaced with an ever worse unit. The fault I had was when the printer went into powersave mode it would not recover without a complete restart.

Now on the replacement, I have the same problem and the unit will not pick up the paper, so I have an additional problem making this printer completely useless to me. I had a horrendous experience with customer services, I had to call 4 different support numbers before I finally spoke to Technical Support, up to now I have made 8 telephone calls wasting over 3 hours, much of this time on hold without a resolution.

I have a 2nd 8500 returned from one of my valued customers which has also been replaced with a refurbished unit without sucess, as the replacement has the exact same problem the first unit had.

HP's customer Service is a joke & an insult to its customers.I am fed up repeating my issues every time I call in, as it is already on my reference ticket. Yet, they still insist on going over the whole sorry saga time after time. I am at risk of loosing my customers entire business because of this issue. It has cost me €175.00 euro in time wasted to date. I have gone through several troubleshooting episodes to no avail, wasting my time when the HP agents know that the issue will not be resolved over the phone.

HP need to own up for producing such a poor, piece of junk and do a full recall on this model.

My complaint is ongoing for 16days now with no solution, it is nothing short of a disgrace, my next step is to complain to Consumer Affairs and highlight HP's despicanle product quality and operating standards to the media. Maybe then they will show some respect for their customers who have wasted their hard earned money on sub-standard HP product.

To quote from your text "HP you are certainly not the company you once were", I fear for your future if this is the way you are now operating.

[Greg_Hafer]

I believe it's  the "A" model, but not sure as once again there is no easy way of finding this out, they don't print it anywhere.

[Doolin]

This is the detail of my unit: HP Officejet Pro 8500A (A910a) (CM755A)

This information is available on the rear panel of the printer, it is on 3 seperate white stick on labels on my unit anyway.

[Greg_Hafer]

Don't know where you're going with this and what difference it's going to make as I'm pretty sure it's a print head issue and I believe they use the same print head.  If I can find this info I'll post, since this is the 3rd printer (2nd referb) sent to me who know's if it's even accurate once I get it.  I don't trust anything from HP anymore.

[pcwizard]

Hi

Run the following firmware update, and let me know if it helps resolve your issues?

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareDownloadIndex?softwareitem=mp-89903-4&cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en&...=

[Greg_Hafer]

Not even close!  Checked the firmware on the printer, used the printer control panel to check, it said firmware is up to date.  Reading what this update was for shows it will do nothing to resolve a print quality issue, don't understand how you felt this would resolve anything!  I'm going to try HP customer service once more which I know will be another long drawn out joke of a process and see if I can get them to replace the print heads which are "supposedly" still under warranty.  If not, then this printer is going on the junk pile as my last HP purchase and I'll go and buy a different manufacture that hopefully makes a product that actually works!

[pcwizard]

Hi Greg_Hafer,

We do not list every little thing that the firmware resolves. If the printer is not on the current firmware from the link i provided you will need to update it before we can properly troubleshoot your issues. Let me know what you would like to do?

[Greg_Hafer]

I got online with tech support Saturday morning.  We went thru all the checks and HP is sending replacement print heads.  We'll see if this fixes the issue and we'll see how long before the next failure of this piece of junk!