While I was living in France I needed a new printer/scanner and decided to buy a HP Photosmart Premium, a combined office machine with everything you need for your home-office. It was not really cheap but it was said that buying directly from the internet would give a 50€ cash-back.
The machine itself runs fine apart some minor problems while scanning but …
The first problem I had was to get my cash-back money. I tried to contact the support via mail and received the answer I should try to call a certain support line. I tried but could not get anyone on the phone so after some tries I just gave up and thought I might as well live with the price I paid. Anyway, the ink for the printer cost quite a fortune and you learn fast where HP makes its real money!
Now I moved to Australia and naturally I moved my printer too.
Lately I ran out of yellow ink and went into a shop to buy a replacement cartridge of yellow. In the shop I was already astonished that there were no 364 cartridges to buy but 564 cartridges which are described as valid replacement for my HP Photosmart Premium c309a.
Back home I got shocked. Not that the cartridge didn’t fit. It was looking exactly like the 364 one which I wanted to replace … but the printer denied to use this original HP cartridge which is the right one for my printer !!! (in Australia)
I called the support and learned that each HP printer has a region code which can be altered three times only and that because I moved to Australia I have to change the region code now. But they could not help me directly and I cannot change the code myself as it seems, the passed the issue to a second level support which should call me within 48h. Naturally I didn’t get any calls.
Since then I had about half a dozen mails exchanged with the support and each time I got a phone no. to call where I am promised that I will get a call from someone who can change the region code of my printer for me.
So far I am still waiting (about 2 week now and several attempts!).
In the meanwhile I learned from the support hotline that if I change the region code my other (nearly full cartridges) will not work any more because they are bought in France! A full set of cartridges cost about $100,- AUD … are they insane?
My conclusion … after so many years of buying HP notebooks and printers from laser to office machines I am extremely disappointed and will not buy anything from HP any more.
And I can only warn everybody to reconsider if he wants to buy from such a Producer because this is purely rip-off of their customers.
