lousy support from HP

[Geoff Wittig]

This is the biggest story of the day in my mind. (and the cleverest writing I've seen in a while)
Have they abandoned development of a fine art and photography printer?
I know even you commented how the b&w prints you were getting were phenomenal.
There is going to be an even better printer,
will it for sure not be HP?
I'm absolutely committed to getting a 9880 when the price/condition on one meets my needs.
But when new I'd absolutely consider a next generation Z  The 5100 doesn't necessarily appeal,
so, waiting for new as the 9900 seems a little $$ for a # of problems the 5100 is OK,
and getting a canon seems like an option I haven't considered enough.

If only we could design our own 'hermaphrodite' large format printer with the best features from each manufacturer. I'd love a printer with the bulletproof build quality of the Epsons, but without the repeated clogs and ink wastage. I'd love the built-in spectro and profiling of the HP, without the lousy paper handling, the flakey driver and the ink overspray. I'd love the speed and ink economy of the Canon, but with better 3rd party support and a straight-through paper path.

Sigh.

[digitaldog]

Well this can’t be good news either....

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-201006...DLETopHeadlines

[neil snape]

This is the biggest story of the day in my mind. (and the cleverest writing I've seen in a while)
Have they abandoned development of a fine art and photography printer?
I know even you commented how the b&w prints you were getting were phenomenal.
There is going to be an even better printer,
will it for sure not be HP?
I'm absolutely committed to getting a 9880 when the price/condition on one meets my needs.
But when new I'd absolutely consider a next generation Z  The 5100 doesn't necessarily appeal,
so, waiting for new as the 9900 seems a little $$ for a # of problems the 5100 is OK,
and getting a canon seems like an option I haven't considered enough.

The overall IQ of the Z 3200 is very good. Lots of gamut, excellent BW. The biggest problem and a big one is the highly glossy grey inks. To overcome that they made the GE but it has it's own peculiarities. Unfortunately GE doesn't fix the gloss differential on any Baryta papers, as the underlaying inks still exhibit  way too much haze, and gloss diff.

IQ wins out on the Epson 9900. I haven't played with the recent Canon, but do hear very good things.

Not sure what will be out at Photokina. It would be nice to see a 17" 10 ink Epson.

[tonywong]

The answer from Tech support was oh , we only guarantee the repairs for 3 months. You're out of luck.

My answer is incompetent repair people, lousy build quality, lack of honouring guarantees, lack of follow up, generally a buy an extended support program type of deal for which I know why*

If you have all the case file numbers you should argue your point that the repair never worked in the first place. I've had a really good experience with my 44" Z3100GP. The built in spectro and self calibration have really worked well with my printing patterns.

Of course, I got mine during the fantastic discount period ($2995!) and I went without any extended warranty. Had to replace a print head right after the warranty gave up but it was cheap and worked like a charm. I should have called when it was under warranty as the warning did pop up intermittently but that was my fault I guess.

Only used HP support twice. Once for the bad Mac serial numbers on the i1, which this forum was a great reference to give to the tech.

Second was to replace the star wheels and pinch rollers, just in case. The media scratching did show up but usually on very curled media. Counter curling helped a bit. The tech who came by was really nice, knew enough about the printers to do the job and really sounded positive about the support aspect to me.

I guess HP service in Western Canada is better than France. I got the tech's card and was encouraged to call him directly in case anything about the fix wasn't working so they would extend the case file if need be.

Whenever I read the horror stories of expired warranties and failures of the Z-series I always worry about my out of warranty printer. But other than it needing to be hard shut off every now and then (months of constant on without any print jobs), it has been near flawless for me.

Annoyances are the buggy firmware (although the latest has been OK), calibration nags, and hard to align sheets, but everything else has been great for me. I really should take better care of it (check for dust and ink overspray) but it just lumbers on without complaint. My previous printers were Epsons, which were clog monsters so if I decide to upgrade it would be HP if they offer the same kind of deal or Canon.

[tonywong]

Well this can’t be good news either....

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-201006...DLETopHeadlines

Those cuts are in IT services. I think HP wants to go with a more automated model.

According to this link, HP printing division looks pretty healthy:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...id=avBBjK7SC0FA

Of course, there's no mention of how the photo printers are doing relative to the rest of the printing division, or how well it is doing with respect to Canon and Epson printers. Hopefully the B series and Z series photo printers get an upgrade and much needed fixes. Would be a shame to see them retreating from this market.

[neil snape]

Those cuts are in IT services. I think HP wants to go with a more automated model.

According to this link, HP printing division looks pretty healthy:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...id=avBBjK7SC0FA

Of course, there's no mention of how the photo printers are doing relative to the rest of the printing division, or how well it is doing with respect to Canon and Epson printers. Hopefully the B series and Z series photo printers get an upgrade and much needed fixes. Would be a shame to see them retreating from this market.

Retreating by omission or by just a huge drive towards the high speed printing market is yet to be seen.

The so called upgrade to a 3200 was not a feature packed upgrade , certainly not a new model. It fixed the problems of the first ones.
The 9180 8850 are simply discontinued. Nothing has been on the photo front since some years ago. Epson and Canon advance. Where does that leave HP in the photo market?

A full featured aspirated bed LFP with media feed over 1.5mm and a new grey ink such as Canon , faster, more robust would be the only way to stay in the game. Otherwise it will be the ticket out.

PS. HP had the last two service calls on record. The others according to the telephone support are not in the list. I have them written down somewhere. They suggested that I put together all I could and ask customer service for a gracious repair.

I might. It's just beyond my patience as I have that throw the thing out the window or beat it to a pulp feeling. I wouldn't do either, as when it is printing normally it is fine, just the intermittent waste of a sheet and restart comes up making it an unreliable printer.  Warranty should have taken care of it, but didn't. I didn't use it after the repairs, months in fact as I use the Epson 9900 at my disposition. I saved the prints for a long time when it was capricious, but just didn't want to go through this again. The number of problems with the 9180/8850 that happened , the problems with the Dream Color monitors QA, the problems with this printer, the problems with incompetence in the tech support, all tell me that HP and the photo market makes for an embarrassing series of mistakes that customers have to be aware of before entering.

[Geoff Wittig]

Retreating by omission or by just a huge drive towards the high speed printing market is yet to be seen.

The so called upgrade to a 3200 was not a feature packed upgrade , certainly not a new model. It fixed the problems of the first ones.

That's sort of my impression. The Z3100 had so much unrealized promise when it was released; the built-in spectro and automated profile generation was just a brilliant idea, and worked great for me. Black & white printing was terrific. And the upgradable firmware seemed to indicate a commitment on HP's part to continuing improvement. But that's not what happened. The Z3200 was an underwhelming upgrade that fixed some of the Z3100's problems, but it still failed to address the paper handling shortcomings and lack of robustness of the basic design.

[tonywong]

Between this and stories I'm hearing about Epson/Decision One service, Canon is starting to look really good right now.

[deanwork]

I never had any trouble with my Z other than poor handling of 8.5x11 inch media. I never had any trouble with 11x14 and up. It always loads the first time. Roll media, which is all I use really works great.

But I totally agree. Canon is the company to watch and I'm very curious to hear how these latest offerings from them hold up. I think they are built like a tank and fast as hell. I really want to see a black and white print from the new ones on fiber gloss. The earlier versions didn't have the gamut or the dither to go straight at Epson. I think this new one may very well have that dither, and better gloss smoothness apparently. Want to see a few prints though. What is really amazing is how they are keeping their price down so low for the 44" model to go directly at HP at the same time and they are surpassing Epson longevity.  Of course none of these printers are selling well. The economy continues to suck globally. It is a very rough time to invest in spectacular R&D and be innovative.

john

Between this and stories I'm hearing about Epson/Decision One service, Canon is starting to look really good right now.

[Colorwave]

Somehow, I'm guessing that HP's money would have been better spent sorting out Neil's problems, rather than see an early evangelist for the HP fine art platform turn publicly against them.  The profit from a printer or two (or more accurately, from ink sales for another one or two printer sales) could have averted a significant amount of bad PR.  Postings on LL have a pretty high ranking on search engines that eclipse the normal readership of these forums.  Someone doing research on a new wide format fine art printer would be quite likely to stumble across this post.

[artobest]

Postings on LL have a pretty high ranking on search engines that eclipse the normal readership of these forums.  Someone doing research on a new wide format fine art printer would be quite likely to stumble across this post.

They're also likely to stumble across virtually identical threads bemoaning the lousy service of every other manufacturer. With all due respect to the OP, these threads are a dime a dozen and do little to raise overall consciousness. Although they probably help the OP feel better.

For what it's worth, my experience of HP service (in the UK) has been fantastic.

[StephenOzcomert]

I suspect Neil's reputation is such as to raise this thread well beyond the "dime a dozen" variety.  You may not know that Neil has been an outstanding source of information for years on wide format printing on a number of different message boards and blog groups as well as having many reviews of papers and printers over the years.  This is very much a niche market and when someone of Neil's stature publicly states his disgust with support from a brand with which he has been associated for years, I suspect its impact will be noticed.  There simply are not that many good objective sources of information out there on wide format printers for the fine art market and Neil's voice has long been one of them.

[artobest]

There's no question about Neil's stature in the online LFP world. My point is that individual experiences of customer support vary so widely that personal accounts of poor service here or there signify little. Neil's experience of what he describes as lousy support doesn't change the fact that I've had nothing but stellar support from HP for the same machine. And likewise, my experiences don't change his. Unfortunately, it's the gripes and grousing that make it onto the discussion boards, and hang around for years exerting an influence far beyond their true significance.

The way I see it, customer support is people doing their jobs - sometimes, like everyone, they screw up. Perhaps, if I were Neil, and my attention was not engaged elsewhere, I would have got serious and put my foot down long before the fifth unsuccessful repair. Clearly there was a major fault with the machine and it needed to be replaced.

[deanwork]

I have to agree with that. There is lousy support from all of these giant corporations. But the fact that they are giant corporations allow us to buy a 44" printer ( in HP's case) with an on board Eye One spectro, one that calibrates,profiles, aligns, and maintains nozzles automatically without wasting ink, with a spectacular permanence and clean black and white for a little over $4,000.00 US , and use it for 3 or 4 years of good use. From what I can see there is far more complaint on all of these lists about the Epson 7900/9900s clogging and banding issues that there ever was about Hp support issues. However, that doesn't mean that they don't exist. They do, with all of these companies and the huge size of an outfit like HP worries me too and always has. Half the the time the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing and they even frustrate themselves which is kind of odd to watch in their phone conversations to each other.

In the end though it seems to me that the company that can build a really solid printer that doesn't NEED much support is the company that is going to eventually sell a lot of ink. And, that is the key for their survival, selling ink. I'm thinking THAT company may end up being Canon. Time will tell. They certainly did it with cameras.

john

There's no question about Neil's stature in the online LFP world. My point is that individual experiences of customer support vary so widely that personal accounts of poor service here or there signify little. Neil's experience of what he describes as lousy support doesn't change the fact that I've had nothing but stellar support from HP for the same machine. And likewise, my experiences don't change his. Unfortunately, it's the gripes and grousing that make it onto the discussion boards, and hang around for years exerting an influence far beyond their true significance.

The way I see it, customer support is people doing their jobs - sometimes, like everyone, they screw up. Perhaps, if I were Neil, and my attention was not engaged elsewhere, I would have got serious and put my foot down long before the fifth unsuccessful repair. Clearly there was a major fault with the machine and it needed to be replaced.

[Roscolo]

the Z3100's problems, but it still failed to address the paper handling shortcomings and lack of robustness of the basic design.

Nothing is perfect, but in the word of wide format photo printers, the z3100 comes pretty close for me. I've never experienced any shortcoming with paper handling. My z handles 44" canvas and 8 inch wide sheets with ease. The design has been far more robust than any printer I've used. Three years of printing without a serious problem and not even one clog. That last part still pleasantly blows my mind! I think I've only had to replace one printhead. Certainly has paid for itself many times over, but equally important, all that time, stress and frustration and ruined prints wasted on Epson clogs is time, ink and material I have reclaimed. Hard to put a price on that, but definitely more than the price of the printer. YMMV

As for the layoffs in HP, sorry for the folks losing their jobs, but I have definitely spoken to some useless folk while working through support. The layoffs are good news from the customer's standpoint if they are getting some of the clowns and bloat out of the way. In my experience, the problem with HP support was getting through to the right person who actually had a clue. Once you find that person, you better write down a direct name and number to that person or dept., because you will likely never find them again if you just call the support number.