To:
Mark Hurd
Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer and President
Hewlett-Packard Company
Just a quick note to let you know why you are losing me forever as an HP customer.
I own the HP Office Jet Pro L7590. I did not realize until today that it has the following stealth “feature”: The printer provides no ability to override use of the color ink cartridges to print in strictly black and white.
This is perhaps the stupidist product feature I have ever seen. It clearly exists just to force me to have to buy more overpriced ink cartridges.
I am about to get on a plane, and I need to print out a several page Microsoft Word document. It’s COMPLETELY black. No yellow in sight. But because my yellow cartridge is empty, the printer refuses to work.
I do not have a car. I do not have the time to make it to the nearest store which carries your overpriced ink cartridges. Therefore, even though I HAVE LOADS OF BLACK INK IN MY BLACK INK CARTRIDGE, I cannot print this TOTALLY BLACK DOCUMENT.
There should have been a big warning (in YELLOW, perhaps!) on the box of this printer when I was purchasing it. “WARNING! BUY LOTS OF EXPENSIVE YELLOW INK CARTRIDGES SO YOU’LL BE ABLE TO PRINT YOUR BLACK AND WHITE DOCUMENTS!!” You should be embarrassed to foist such ludicrously gimped products onto the public.
I have bought nothing but HP printers for my business for the last twelve years. That policy ends today.
caveat emptor buddy, caveat emptor!
But yeah, I’d be chapped too.
Bad news, Ray. All of the printer manufacturers are doing the same evil thing and have been doing so for several years. The only real cure is to buy a black-only printer so you have a way to print the majority of things that really matter in a hurry.
I just bought a Kodak inkjet because I am pissed off at HP and Epson so far. (Larry and my market events person begged me not to go all black and white on them.)
The HP color laser in front of me does all the things you cited, but at much greater cost. It also calibrates itself frequently, which is either the printer form of autoerotism, an excuse to waste ink, or both. When these cartridges run out, it’s off to the recycling center with my last HP printer.
HP is the only major private for-profit employer in Corvallis, so I would like to root for the home team. Their business practices make them hard to love. Before they outsourced everything overseas, they hooked up with a bunch of contractor companies who hired all the permatemps HP needed.
And another thing — how the hell does ink in a cartridge EXPIRE? Expire THIS , HP.