Printer using waaay too much ink

[Mortz1]

Hi all. Really hope you can help with this!

I've had an HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M479fnw printer for about 18 months. All was going well until earlier this year when the initial toner cartridges ran out and I forked out around £400 for a complete set of official ones in March.

The black cartridge ran out last week and so I replaced that, and not – after only a couple of days of moderate use (around 100 pages printed out) it's apparently used a quarter of its ink already!

I've attached a pic showing current levels. Bear in mind that these cartridges were installed in mid-March and, in total, I've probably only printed off around 250 colour/b&w pages.

Does anyone have any idea what's happening?

Many thanks in advance for any help at all.

[Valsimot]

Print supplies status page and usage page from the printer's report menu scan and post here.

[Mortz1]

Hi. Sorry for not getting back to you sooner, but I was away for the Bank Holiday weekend. Here are the scans you asked for. Hopefully there's an obvious problem here?

[Valsimot]

There are definitely some differences with toner levels.  3 colour cartridges have printed 876 pages each, and the toner level varies from 70% cyan to 20% yellow.

The page yield is based on a 5% coverage, any chance you are printing something that has a lot of yellow?

[Mortz1]

No, it's pretty standard stuff. Some work newsletters and the rest is mostly labels for printing.
It's worth remembering too that all four cartridges were replaced in March, and then I had to replace the black one again around a week ago.

At this rate I'll be buying a new black cartridge every month, which is insane!

[Valsimot]

It's probably something printer related. It's not consuming too much toner, it's wrongly calculating toner consumption. 

[Mortz1]

Ah, I see. So would i right in thinking those levels are incorrect?

[Valsimot]

Yes, the data regarding ink level is probably wrong. It doesn't match printed pages and levels.