HP Officejet Pro 8600 Plus Issues, Observations & Grievances

[Preymantas]

Good Day Upper Management of HP,

First of all, let me say that when I first purchased my Officejet Pro 8600 Plus when it came out I was very pleased with it. I purchased this model because it was a bit higher-end as I was looking for reliability, durability and trouble free operation 1st time, every time in addition to duplexing which I really needed for scanning in all my documents, magazines, books, etc. I’m trying to consolidate by saving my information and recycling paper and making space, not to mention my information being accessible and will be a few, short mouse clicks away, saving me enormous amounts of time and effort the more of it I get digitized… No more fumbling for information or wasting large amounts of time sifting through file cabinets, etc.

Unfortunately just after the warranty ran out I started having issues, issue after issue. It’s gotten to the point now where my duplexing is all but useless and my scans look like crap, I’ll explain why later in bullet points that HP has dropped the ball on and missed the boat completely concerning design and engineering. The complaints are so numerous I doubt I’ll ever waste another cents on any HP products again sadly… They “used” to be somebody trustworthy…

Here is a list of issues that need serious attention and re-evaluation in both design and engineering from where I sit…

1. CLEANING… I’m so frustrated with the braindead responses from HP support to folks with real, tangible, repeatable, common issues about cleaning. The responses are in reality, non-existent and do NOTHING to answer customer questions on HOW TO. It’s like they have a bunch of robots without commonsense coping pre-written scripts that most of the time NEVER even address what the customers are detailing and trying to get support for! Aggravating isn’t even close to the feelings elicited from that poor level of support.

I have found that a thorough cleaning is impossible. Why? Because it is only “superficial” cleaning on the outside. The interior of my 8600 is filthy, full of dust, paper particles and film on the “UNDERSIDE” of the glass which I can’t get to for cleaning!!! Why not? HELLO???? What incompetent designed and engineered that blatant blunder? How do we get the glass out to properly clean ALL THE GLASS without destroying the unit? I have streaks on all my scans going through the ADF unit because of paper particles that are “STUCK” on the underside, inside part of the glass! How do we clean that? Crickets, I know, that question isn’t even addressed by support anymore… Grrrrr. HP is moving backwards…

2. DISASEMBLY… There is NO design/engineering for EASY, SAFE disassembly to facilitate “proper” maintenance/repairs/cleaning! Why Not? Really???

3. STOLEN INK…! I installed brand new ink cartridges about 8 months ago because I needed to print 3 import color documents. They were not photos and only used a small amount of color ink from the brand new HP cartridges I just installed. Since that time I have printed nothing in color and very little in black only grayscale yet my cartridges are now empty again! Why, because HP cleans the cartridges EVERYTIME the printer is started! Why isn’t there an option to turn off print head cleaning or intelligently (commonsense) make it only clean when printing is called for? Additionally, where using only black ink is required, I realize I can set to print black only and it does a good job doing grayscale which is what “most people” print in anyway, so putting my braindead hat on again, why ISN’T printing BLACK ONLY the “DEFAULT” setting so the printer only uses black ink and not defaulting to color when only grayscale is required to print grayscale? Printing grayscale using color ink is just incompetent thinking… Dou….! So many braindead oversights[edit] I mean, come on HP. Level out and fly right or didn’t your parent teach you that as a small child…

Why isn’t the cleaning defaulting to and performed only PRIOR to the 1st call for printing after initial startup??? Personally, I’m scanning the majority of the time and not printing and I have to replace ink again. Hmmmm, that can’t be considered ethical business practices in anyone’s book…

4. DUPLEXING… Even though I do my best to maintain my 8600 in pristine condition as well as I can and as HP’s incompetent design/engineering will allow me to, it still behaves “flakey”. Sometimes it works ok and sometimes it doesn’t. Example: I’ll do one job where I’m using the ADF duplexing during scanning say 50 pages and it functions as expected. The next job I do a similar job during the same session, the duplexer does not align “all” of the duplexing opposite sides of the pages properly at the top, cutting off a proportional amount of bottoms equal to the misalignments! Why? It’s haphazard in its operation. The next job will run fine and on it goes…

So, with reliability and time saving in mind I’ve had no choice but to only scan ONE SIDE at a time and do all the odd pages first, then do all the even pages, then reverse sort the even pages and finally collate into the finished document. I’m scanning to PDF and using a utility to make them searchable to duplicate the original documents I’m digitizing. It would be nice to load a stack and multitask on something else while it’s going, but now sometimes paper is feeding in crooked even though I just cleaned as directed and I have to babysit another HP product so I can stop it before it destroys something else… Grrrr. BUT, interesting I have discovered that the duplexing is soooooooooooooooo slooooooooooooow that it is MUCH faster to do ODDS, then EVENS, process and combine and it’s done, I’m doing all my digitizing that way now. Why is duplexing sooooooooooo sloooooooow, buggy and problem prone? Like I said, the next job runs fine, sometimes even the next few jobs.

5. When I first purchased my 8600 it scanned up to 8.5” x 14” through the ADF which is something I needed, it was a major part of my decision making criteria of the purchase. Almost immediately, HP blunders abound and there are firmware updates and software updates and BAM! No more scanning 14” long sheets through the ADF, no longer supported!!! What! So, I got the unit back into out-of-the-box condition by rolling back the firmware and software to the original out-of-the-box condition and have been using it ever since that way, BECAUSE THAT’S WHY I BOUGHT IT TO FUNCTION AS ADVERTISED!!!!!!!!!!! What is wrong with you people??? Better yet, what is RIGHT with you people? Is there ANYTHING???

In conclusion,

Why aren’t these obvious, blatant complaints being addressed in the support forums?

Why aren’t ALL of the obviously blatant complaints being DESIGNED AND ENGINEERED OUT of all future products? Do you want people to “continue” purchasing HP products or not because there are a LOT of pissed off folks because of all these issues including me?

• Make BLACK ONLY printing the DEFAULT which leads to…
• SEPERATE the color print heads cluster from the black print head through commonsense design/engineering so the color print heads DO NOT clean everytime there is a call for black only printing, which leads to…
• ADD and OPTION to turn off cleaning print heads at power on. You want to save and not waste ink usage, don’t you? Ink waste is one of your weakest attributes and why you are losing market share!!! Geesh… We’re all not powering up our printers to print all the time, especially those of us using our more expensive AIO printers like my 8600 Plus primarily for ADF duplexing scanning! Which leads to…
• Design/Engineer faster duplexing. It’s faster to scan single sided odds, then evens and collate, MUCH faster! Address that inadequacy. If we wanted throw-away HP printers we be spending $50 instead of $200 for what we thought was a quality, reliable printer that would last and be easy to maintain!
• Redesign/Re-Engineer ACCESS to all the components for maintenance (cleaning, lubing, repairing, etc.). Again, the 8600 Plus grade shouldn’t be an HP Throw-Away AIO printer…
• TRULY SUPPORT your customers by cutting the scripted, non-focused responses to detailed, direct inquiries. That REALLY torx and turns off customers looking for direct, focused answers to problems & issues like simply thoroughly cleaning the glass INCLUDING the underside of the glass, a major issue and brain fart. Who dropped the ball and missed the boat on that one?
• ADD a major feature that others like Canon have had for years, SCANNING LONG DOCUMENTS like fanfold booklets, etc. through the ADF. The last time I looked Canon supports scanning up to 8.5”x32”” documents through their ADF’s. Why doesn’t HP? You guys should be the leaders, not the followers! IMO, there is no reason longer documents couldn’t be scanned through the ADF come to think of it. At least compete if you’re not going to lead!!!
• ADD the ability to “BATCH” after scan reconfigure scanning settings of BRIGHTNESS and CONTRAST to pages in the HP Scan app, else we have to cancel, and re-adjust to get images looking their best and try again. MORE WASTED TIME! Might even want to go full tilt and add saturation & hue while you’re at it. Give us batch after scanning control to eliminate post processing tasks. It all takes more time… You should be always enhancing and adding. Which leads to…
• FIX the prominent, annoying issue with HP Scan BLOATING/USING/CRASHING memory issues. No need to keep all the scanned pages in memory with the advent of SSD’s which have blistering access speed. Offload all that on to the drive so HP Scan is light weight, nimble and capable of scanning 1000’s of pages at a time without crashing! Cut the memory footprint down! It’s slow enough as it is!

These are just SOME of the major issues I personally have been having with my higher end Officejet Pro 8600 Plus AIO printer and I’m not happy about it at all.

Reliability, Dependability, Intelligent Design & Engineering HP is no longer…

Your products “should” work as advertised and expected the 1st time, everytime without issue, especially all of these issues. HP needs to get serious about being “pro-active” in its design & engineering, support of all its products. It’s blatantly obvious to everyone here that you’re not listening seriously to our complaints & issues being reported. Your responses speak volumes to that. Your goal should be with everything you produce to become the Maytag Repair Man… BORED because there are no complaints or issues with your products, else something is very wrong that you haven’t mastered that by now. That’s the way it used to be sadly. Now you falsely advertise, bait and switch (releasing the 8600 claiming, advertising 8.5” x 14” scanning, then changing firmware and software, downgrading it to only 8.5” x 11”) and produce products that only last as long as the warranty if the customer is lucky. HP makes “throw-a way’s” now sadly… Welcome to the bottom of the pile HP!

My 8600 Plus was roughly $200 when I bought mine when it first came out. I don’t consider that a “throw-away” level product and I for one will probably never purchase another HP product because of its poor performance and numerous issues, including the poor buggy software, until HP gets it act together and starts producing smart, well thought-out designed/engineered, reliable, customer maintenance friendly products and truly responds to support issues like a pro by “making things right” when there is a problem. There shouldn’t be any if you were doing your jobs competently… That level of competency anywhere else of those responsible for the shameful level that HP has sunken to would have been fired long ago if HP management really cared about reputation…

HP seems not to care anymore about quality, reliability, durability or customer satisfaction…

If you want a cheap, unreliable, problem riddled/support throw away AIO printer, think HP!

Now I feel better… Good Day and Happy New Year HP! I hope it’s a year of real change for the better for your sakes!

[Betty0610]

@Preymantas

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