Caveat Emptor (Is there an echo in here?)

While the HP K550 has outstanding print quality and is blazingly fast, very poor quality control, bungling customer service and major design flaws render it a failure.

Right out of the box, we were hit with the now-familiar refrain of a bad black print head. As one familiar with occasionally defective hardware, I thought little of it and contacted HP support. After over an hour of having me jump through hoops, the CS representative finally had to concede that I was correct and that my printer had the same problem afflicting thousands of others. I gave them my shipping information and they assured me that I would have a new print head right away.

A week later, after no print head arrived, I once again contacted HP CS, and asked about the replacement parts. They assured me that it would ship right away and I soon received an email confirming shipping and thought little of it.

Another week later, with still no print head, I contacted HP CS again. They researched the order and found that they had shipped it to the wrong country. Not county, mind you, COUNTRY. OK, fine, they’ll ship another…

They did so after another week passed and after four more days, I got the print cartridge. Grand total days putting off major projects: 29.

This would all be a bit more understandable if the printer did not also possess several other design issues:

1. One of the worst-designed and unreliable paper feed mechanisms I’ve ever had the misfortune to deal with. Paper jams are very common and the inaccessible feed roller system make clearing them a major undertaking.

2. The printer’s re-start time is horrific; after a cold power-up, the machine has to cycle through numerous time-consuming self-tests. This is not conducive to saving energy and these days, should be considered a form of industrial eco-crime.

3. On top of all this, the machine makes occasional horrific grinding noises during self-test, grinding teeth off the transport belt.

I sincerely hope that this lemon will last long enough to amortize 50% of my investment so that I can justify donating it to some poor victim, err… charity. Alas for the days of my trusty 940C and woe be unto me for trading it away for this beastly concoction of cobbled-together detritus…