Hewlet Packard
HP Printer and Ink cartridge regionalisation - Hewlett Packard Printe

I purchased an all in one printer from HP about 18 months ago. Shortly after I purchased it, I relocated to America for a job. Since I had just bought the printer I took it with me to my new home. I used it there with no issues, until I ran out of ink and purchased the replacement cartridges. I then discovered that since my printer was purchased in the UK, the American cartridges for the same printer, would not work on my English printer!!! I spent 2 hours on the phone with "customer support", to find this out!

The support person then suggested that I upgrade to the latest model which was slightly better anyway and did not have this regionalisation issue. The price to upgrade was not vey much so I decided to do it and also signed up for the extended warranty just in case. HP promptly sent me out another printer and it worked no problem, until I was relocated back to Europe!
The rep. Swore to me that if I were to go back to Europe I would not have the same issue again so I believed him and that is the only reason I agreed to upgrade. Now I had the same issue in Spain. My just recently upgraded American printer, does not work with spanish cartridges because of the same regionalisation issue.

Again I found myself on the phone with "customer support" and this time was even worse. The young lady who tried to "help" me with resetting the region, proceeded to tell me that the reason it wasn't working was because I was doing something wrong! The commands she was giving me were the right ones. Nevermind that I kept reminding her that I use a MAC and the commands may be different. She was rude, abrasive and I was the one in the wrong.

I finally had to prove to her that the error messages I was getting were not made up and I did a screen print and sent it to her. At this point she finally eased up and said ok I will have to consult the manual (!!!) and call you back. Three days later, she called back and guess what? I was right, it is different for a MAC.

We tried again and it still didn't work, so she agreed to go run some more tests and then call me back. At this point I was so cheesed off with the whole thing I asked my friend who was coming over from America to bring some American cartridges. I give up!!!
As you can see I now have yet another printer that can only be used in one country without problems. I have spent %u20AC30 on cartridges I can't use and the replacements are the most expensive in the history of ink cartridges as I have to either go to America to get them or have them sent to me! And the part that really annoys me more than anything is I can't even send a complaint to HP, because they seem to have left any contact information for "CUSTOMER SERVICE" off their website. It should not be this complicated, its just a printer!

Company: Hewlet Packard
Country: USA

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