Having to return a heavy printer cost HP a longtime customer

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I had an HP LaserJet 5000 (11x17 paper size) printer for over 25, yes, 25 years. It just gave up the ghost a week and a half ago, so I got way more than my money's worth from that printer over that period of time. I was very happy with the quality of HP products. The toner was cheap and the print quality, even just a week ago, was outstanding.

I had my eye on a Color LaserJet CP5225dn for quite some time, knowing this day would come. A friend of mine suggested I buy one from his favorite photo and video store. He said they take everything back within 30 days, no questions asked. Sadly, I had to send this new printer back the day after I received it because the removable fuser was defective: no matter what kind of paper I put in it, it would jam each time trying to go through the fuser. fortunately, the photo and video store paid for the return shipping cost, which could not have been cheap.

Two online chats and a phone call later, two of the three HP tech support people from offshore said I had to send back the entire 98-pound printer and get a new one. All I needed was a new fuser, weighing about 2 or 3 pounds, which could have been taken care of locally by an HP authorized repair tech, and the printer would have likely worked just fine. The last offshore tech support person I talked to hung up on me when I questioned why I had to lug the **bleep** printer back to FedEx and wait for a new one, when the simple solution was to get a new fuser.

For all this crap that gave me high stress, as I have lost a week of print productivity in my business, I'm done with HP. I doubt I'll hear from anyone within HP. I am now in negotiations with a local business equipment company that sells and services Ricoh and Canon; hopefully that will be a better experience than this was.