Photosmart C7280 all in one printer keeps giving me expired ink cartridge warning

[AlRoss]

I have been getting this problem too.

Yesterday after fitting some new cartridges I had a further problem which led to me learning (thanks to this and other forums) the secret codes that let you into engineer maintenance mode.  Hold down * and # together on the keypad then enter the secret code 123.  Be careful in there, but there are some interesting tools / reports in there including the engineers self test diagnostics.

Here's what I found:

The report shows the date of install of each cartridge and the date of expiry.  It's interesting.  Your cartridge does NOT come with an individual expiry date.

The expiry date is calculated from the install date by adding 758 days.  So, installed on 21May 13 expires 18 June 15 and so on.

Well ..... not quite!

One of my new cartridges installed yesterday 21 May 13 has an expiry of 21 May 13 - no math done here.  DEDUCTION: the printer has goofed and assigned the wrong expiry date to the cartridge.  I have an older Light Cyan cartridge that has been a pain in the neck for over a year having announced itself as out of date straight away.  Same issue - expiry date same as install date.  Yet it should actually still be in date.

This makes me doubly mad.  There's HP telling us how much of a problem it is to have old ink and its the printer itself that is getting this information in a mess.  And I don't want to hear any excuses about cleaning contacts.  If the printer knows when the cartridge got installed it can do the math without reverting to the cartridge.  Or is it writing the install date to the cartridge?  Seems unnecessarily complicated and error prone to me.

Why should I buy another HP product when this darn thing is goofing up?

Al

[CoolBreeze202]

Interesting that my problem is also only with light cyan. Been through three brand new cartridges now at about $15 each for nothing. A few years back HP had a problem with notebook computer displays they owned up to on some models but not others. My kids were using them for school and I ended up throwing away two useless computers at $1,500 each and needless to say never bought another computer from HP. Looks like not owning up to design problems might impact their printer trade as well. Of course, lack of my business will go unnoticed but I wonder how many people like me react the same way.

[AlRoss]

Well, seems like there might be a date in there after all so perhaps I'm wrong.  Checking my cartridges for the date printed on the bottom the offending ones are clearly printed with dates in 2010.  The others are OK.

So the question is how do I get up to date cartridges?

Stock control at the suppliers is important if this is true.

And the bit about adding 758 days is still right - run the report and check the math.

Al

[annoyedcustomer]

This is truly an example of invasive marketing !!! They should be able to disable these messages once your printer is beyond its warranty.  At that point, it is my decision if I'd like to "take the chance of ruining my printer".  It is all about selling more ink and ironically their printers are known for higher than average ink costs to begin with !!!!

Imagine if your out of warranty car could not be started if you didn't change the oil per your recommended service schedule!!!   HP listen to your annoyed customers because you are losing them.  I will never buy an HP again for this reason only.  I have had no problems with it and am happy with it otherwise but this is enough to put us over the edge.

when I just spoke to tech support he had a Freudian slip of the tongue and told me they are not ALLOWED to change this in their software; not that they CAN'T.  That speaks volumes !!

[Win7UpPissed]

I've got the exact same problem, except all 3 of my cyan carthridges expire in November 2014.   Today is July 30, 2013.

I am sick of my HP C7280 printers.  I have 2 of them.  They are without a doubt the most frustrating HP printers I have ever encountered.  I will never buy another HP printer.  

[CoolBreeze202]

Hard reset worked. Thanks for the suggestion.

[Ciara_B]

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@Win7UpPissed wrote:

I've got the exact same problem, except all 3 of my cyan carthridges expire in November 2014.   Today is July 30, 2013.

I am sick of my HP C7280 printers.  I have 2 of them.  They are without a doubt the most frustrating HP printers I have ever encountered.  I will never buy another HP printer.  

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Hi, the dates lasermarked on the cartridges are Warranty Ends dates; they don't 'expire' on that date. Check out the links below for details...

http://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c00206040

Warranty Ends date locations

To find the “Warranty Ends” date, look in the following table for the date's location on each product. The date follows the YYYY/MM/DD or YYYY/MM format, where YYYY indicates the year, MM indicates the month, and DD indicates the day.

Also see link for info on Ink Expiration

http://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c01764161

Hope this helps

Ciara

[Jim30]

Cartrides were refilled at Costco.

[PcRooster]

This might get deleted since HP is protective of their Ink Rules but it's helpful in the following circumstances.  Let's say that the engineers at HP really wanted to protect your printer, the head is valuable and old ink can damage it.  So you get an expired message and depending on your printer you either cannot print or you have to bypass it.  But let's also say that your printer is also old and not valuable enough for HP to come up with drivers for your new operating system.  How valuable is that head?  So in this case your ink might be more valuable than your printer.  So now you have to get up and manually bypass the error message because your software does not allow you to do this from your PC.  Then you get a second message, a non expired cartridge is running low, not empty but low.  Two error messages on one printer panel.  Oh my gosh says the printer, I cannot handle that and it locks up rendering everything useless until you flop down another $45 on ink.

So an ink cartridge expires when your printer decides it is too many days past the date, whatever date that might be.  What if you reset the date of your printer?  It cannot talk to the PC anymore so where does it get it's date information?  The internal clock, the battery powered internal clock.  So if you, or someone you know, is really handy with electronics they could snap apart the printer (power disconnected of course) and change out the battery.  I will note this procedure in the hands of an amateur could render your printer less esthetic, you could break plastic, or even less useful, you could damage the printer irreparably.  The concept is simply to remove the battery long enough for the printer to forget what day it is.  It will go back to the factory 'born on' date.  Then all of your cartridges seem very new with really long expiration periods.

You'll have to check out somewhere else to see how to open your printer.  Plus, if your printer time stamps your cartridges rather than specific dating them you may have to do this again in 2 years. 

Hope this helps a few of you.

[dream2long]

I just installed a brand new Light Cyan ink cartridge into my printer and it says it's expired.  I took it out read the expired date and yes it's date says it's expired.  WTH?  I purchased this cartridge a while back to have on hand when my ink gets low and it's expired when I use it?  Less than a year after I bought it from Staples.  This is not a good thing.  I think it's crazy that it would be expired before it's ever been opened.  They must have the expiration date built into the cartridge itself.   I've been buying XL in some colors, so others must not use as much ink for them not to get used up before I've replaced other ink cartridges. So mad at HP for this!  Our other HP printer just a couple of years old that is seldom used, is constantly saying it's out of ink, like it dries up in a couple of months.  What's going on?  Is HP desperate to sell ink?