 "Hmmmm . . . ." | 2010-03-01 |
| - Reviewed By Riversider from New York, NY |
I read many of the reviews here before buying this product. The thing that scared me the most was claims of high-pitched noise, even when the machine isn't printing. Somehow I got past that fear and bought the machine. Whew. Mine has no high-pitched noise, whether printing or not. But here's the story. Setup is not easy and is made all the more difficult because of the now famous NO PAPER MANUAL. This is a serious mistake on HP's part. How cheap can you get? This machine has too many features and functions not to have a comprehensive manual.
This leads to another problem. With no manual, you must rely all the more on HP customer support. Clearly, HP does not want you to talk to anyone at their company for any reason. Hell, just try to find the right customer support phone number. I have to agree that HP provides virtually no support.
Upon setup, my machine kept giving me a printer error (about the print heads being faulty) and kept running the 20-minute printer setup sequence every time I tried to print anything. This was quite annoying. I went through the head cleaning correction procedures about five times, and after the fifth time, the error message went away.
Since then, I haven't had any problems. But this seems to be a lot to go through just to get a new product to work right. |
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 "NO quality control, NO customer service. Lots of time wasted!" | 2010-02-26 |
| - Reviewed By J. Hessen from SF, CA |
| The old HP is dead and buried. The New HP doesn't want your business. That's the only conclusion I can come to after the appallingly bad experience I've had over the last TWO WEEKS trying to get warranty support and customer service for HP's lousy products. Our OfficeJet 7590 died after less than a year of light/moderate use. Office staff called HP, who incorrectly told them our warranty had expired. I then dug up the receipt for the printer, spent an hour on the line with utterly powerless customer service minions, then finally raised enough stink that I got bumped up to a "Corporate Customer Service Case Manager." Equally useless. He continually stressed all the things he couldn't promise me, like a working printer in a timely manner, but he assured me that he'd do everything "the system" allowed him to so that eventually we'd be up and running again. A week after our first call, we finally received an OfficeJet 8500 to replace our broken unit. Got it out of the box & set up, only to find that it didn't work either -- bad printheads. Called my "Case Manager" at HP, who basically said, "ooops." And offered to send me a replacement printhead as soon as "the system" would let him, because not even a senior case manager can override the system to actually provide customer service! Three days later, I had the new print head. Installed it. No dice. More calls to my case manager, and I'm told they'll have to replace the whole machine with yet another one. But he can't process the replacement order until the first defective printer (OfficeJet 7590)is shipped back to them. So after additional DAYS without a printer, copier & fax, we get the second OfficeJet 8500 which turns out to be a refurbished shell of a machine. I'm then instructed to cannibalize parts from the broken 8500 to put into the refurbished replacement. I start it up, wait through twenty minutes of initializing, then it tells me that BOTH printheads "have a problem." I'm once again on hold with my case manager as we go through a reset & reinitializing cycle. So after two weeks without a printer, hours on the phone, and hours of setup and installation time, maybe we'll get this machine to work, maybe he'll have to send me a third one to try my luck with. Regardless, I'll never buy another HP product again. What a shame to see this company reduced to this. |
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 "A few hurdles but nothing to really be bothered with." | 2010-02-23 |
| - Reviewed By Michael from USA |
Before buying this printer, I read almost all of the reviews. Having been in the computer and networking business for many years, I figured there was probably nothing I couldn't overcome unless there was a real hardware or software bug. Well there were no bugs.
What do I like most about this machine: print quality, features! Superb! As good as the best color laser.
In other reviews, I read about the printer bouncing up and down while in operation, so I just placed it on a stable surface. No problem.
I read about people complaining about the wireless setup. I followed the directions, made sure I had my "key" and "network name" handy, and it was a piece of cake. ...and now I have the flexibility of putting it where ever it's convenient for me. No problem.
I went to my Windows Printer Folder and set up the default and sharing options, and now it's accessible throughout the house. No Problem.
The quality of this printer output surpasses my older printer to the extent that the old one has been relegated to backup status. Oh, I'll use it ... because I still have ink cartridges and I don't want to throw them away. When they are gone, I'll be hard pressed to buy new ones.
My old Canon fax machine has been sent to the electronics recycling dump.
My old Xerox copier will continue to see service until the toner cartridge is depleted. A new one is $130+ and a new drum is $165+, so I don't think I will be sinking any money into that. To the recycling dump with it.
I checked out the cost of replacement ink cartridges, and found that each of the color cartridges can be purchased for about $19 (times three). The black TANK cartridge is about $45-49. The replaceable print heads are about $60 each (times 2). I honestly don't know how long the cartridges and heads will last, but based upon my prior experience with HP inks, I'll bet it's a lot longer than Canon products (ink guzzlers)
It's early in the life cycle of the machine, but as of now, I am really pleased with this purchase.
One more point: You will not find a better price than here on Amazon. When considering that it is tax and shipping free, it's a real deal.
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| "HP Officejet Pro 8500 Wireless" | 2010-02-20 |
| - Reviewed By Ron and Kay Thomas from Boardman, OR |
We've had this unit for about two months now. It works okay. The copy and print functions work well. It doesn't feed the paper very good, it will have a mispick every so often, to the point that we are considering getting it warrantied. It seems to send and receive faxes well. The noise factor is a little more than average, not really bad but it is more than we expected. The scanning also works well for as much as we have done, we've scanned to email and to files, though in limited amounts. Overall we haven't used this enough yet to have really firmed up our opinion.
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| "YOU CAN NOT COUNT ON HP" | 2010-02-18 |
| - Reviewed By Dr. Shelly from Bethalto, Il |
| I purchased a brand new HP printer 8500 for my work from home office. In November with very light use it quit working. I called customer service at HP and received a refurbish printer for the 30 dollar shipping costs. I had to put it together and reinstall the printer to all computers involved. It also costs me two weeks without a printer. 3 months later again with very light use it quit during an extremely busy time for my work. I called had to be assertive and after talking to the "executive customer service team" was suppose to receive a printer in the next three days. It is four days later and just called customer service and no printer possibly will ship on the 2nd of march-two weeks later if then. I again requested an explanation on why she would lie to me about it coming by Wednesday if it was not going to. I explained to her that I would have gone Monday to purchase a different printer if I was told it would be two to three weeks before I could receive a printer. They would not refund my previous shipping costs and offered nothing but a verbal apology for the gross inconvenience and costs I, the customer am enduring. Companies should not be allowed to treat people in this fashion with total disregard for the impact on their lives. |
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 "What a disappointment" | 2010-02-15 |
| - Reviewed By Linda Barnes from Great state of Texas |
I bought this product after reading a great review of it on CNET; my objective was to find an all in one printer that also printed great photos. I have had it only 5 months, and haven't printed any photos yet because it already needs new printheads. It frequently needs to be readdressed to the computer, and I still can't seem to scan to my computer by selecting scan from the display panel. Calls to HP service have taken forever to resolve, and I could live with the networking issues (by the way, establishing a network connection is ridiculously complicated to set up), if I didn't have to already rush out and buy new printheads because these are already clogged.
Sorry; can't really recommend this machine.. |
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