15 out of 15 people found this review helpful.
Just Be Careful Where You Buy it!
Date of Review: Feb 11, 2006
The Bottom Line: Consider a refurbished unit - the warranty is better. Otherwise make sure the store will give you a refund or a new replacement, because Canon won't.
After reading a lot of good reviews, I bought the MP780 to replace my HP6110 that was starting to go (a little prematurely, I think, considering I don't use it a lot).
First thing I noticed, as an Officejet user, was that the control panel looks like its been through a blender - on the HPs, the controls are laid out according to how you use it - more buttons that way, but incredibly simple to use. On the Canon, you will take some time trying to find things - if you use it everyday, I'm sure you will get used to it quickly, but there is nothing intuitive about it at all.
The printer arrived yesterday, and the setup was more tedious than with my HP, but not bad. The setup instructions provided do not line up with what happens on your screen, although they claim to. The installation puts a lot more stuff on your PC than the instructions mention, and you have to do a lot of undocumented clicking - but if you just read carefully on your screen, you won't have a problem - the actual installation is not complicated.
All went well until the last step - plugging in the USB cord. "Unknown device" - whoops - the set up instructions didn't mention that, and surprisingly (for a very reputable company), the instructions don't say a word about what to do if you have a problem. Nothing - not a word.
So after hunting through device manager, etc., and still unable to get it to work, I got on line and found out how to reach tech support (they could tell you this on the instruction sheet - there is lots of room....
Tech support was friendly, but ultimately tried to tell me it was Dell's fault. When I said I was skeptical about that, considering that all of my other USB devices work just fine, she put me on hold, and came back moments later and said it was the MP780 after all - after half an hour of explaining why it was my Dell, not my Canon...
So here's the important part. I got a defective unit - no big deal, it happens, right? Well, according to Canon's warranty, I have two choices - schlep it to their repair facility ($20 of taxis where I live), or get a refurbished unit as a replacement. That's right - dead out of the box, and Canon refuses to give you a new replacement! I would understand if I had it for a month and then it died - a refurbished unit would make sense if mine were used. But you buy it brand new, and they replace it with a used one? I spoke to a supervisor (John), who very smugly told me that "Canon is honoring your warranty". Well, when you are on hold with Tech Support, the recording says Canon will "exceed your expectations". Not mine.
Fortunately, this has a happy ending. I bought my MP 780 from Amazon. And Amazon stands behind what it sells, even if the manufacturer doesn't. So I logged on to Amazon, and in about 3 clicks, I had a choice - send it back at their cost for a refund, or send it back at their cost for a replacement. Now that's a warranty.
I chose the refund. Canon obviously makes some very high quality products, and maybe I just got unlucky. But warranties are short enough to begin with on this sort of product, and so I am going to stick with companies that stand behind their products better than Canon does.
As an alternative, you might want to consider buying a refurbished Canon model (it comes with a full warranty) to begin with - if it goes bad, they replace it with another just like it. That seems fair. Why don't they do that with new ones?
