The dogs that didn’t bark

THIS is a tale of consumer protection. Or rather, it would be if government worked properly.

Instead it’s a tale of one consumer’s foolishness in believing their interests were being safeguarded by consumer protection laws and official watchdogs.

It’s an expensive tale too. Quite long, so it comes in two parts.

Pick a Dealer – any dealer

A few years ago, our laser printer was costing a fortune in toner and only printed single-sided, so it was expensive on paper too. It had to go.

Wanting a networked printer that we could all use, double sided printing and scanning was important, as was its cost including the cost of replacement cartridges.

With two or three options on the shortlist, I wanted to see what they looked like before buying one locally, to help keep local retailers in business.

Going round as many local suppliers as possible, I eventually decided to buy an HP Officjet Pro 8500A together with one set of spare cartridges.

As I recall the printer was just under £200 and the XL inkjet cartridges just under £100 (half the cost of toner cartridges).

Things were going well.

OK, there were a few niggles. The paper tray only took half a ream, so there were always half opened reams floating round the house. After a while, I noticed that putting dog-eared paper in the printer made it jam. Switching to buying a big box of paper solved the storage problem, but it was bulky and heavy.

We don’t print much and because of the eye-watering expense of printing colour photos and pictures, we’d long since stopped.

When we had to print in colour, we went ahead, until one day the blue ink cartridge ran out and the printer refused to print. Even in black and white. Having no spare ink it was down to the local office supplies place to buy new cartridges.

The rot sets in

After throwing away the first one or two sets of empty inkjet cartridges, being reasonably ecominded, I’d started storing the empties until I could discover how to recycle them economically.

Continuing to replenish cartridges as they ran out, I began to realise how costly they were.

On one occasion it seemed like I’d only bought the previous £90’s worth a few weeks earlier. Incorrect, but not by much, as I now started noticing how often I had to replace them as well.

Loyalty costs

Going into Costco one week, I noticed they were offering a cartridge refill service. Returning with an empty set, I found that although they could refill most HP cartridges, they couldn’t do ours (HP940).

Time passed.

I continued buying HP replacements until finally in 2017 my loyalty, to Bill Hewlett’s and Dave Packard’s excellent products from when I’d been a young engineer, was exhausted. With misgivings, I bought a couple of after-market cartridges from Staples at half the cost of the HP ones.

When time came to replace one, I found that it didn’t work, so I tried the other one and it didn’t work either. Calling Staples, they sounded unsurprised and suggested I take them back and get a refund. But I couldn’t find the receipt.

Later while printing a picture for an art project, first blue then yellow started misbehaving, eventually stopping entirely. Fresh cartridges didn’t fix things.

The built in cleaning routines, put there to “ensure optimum print quality”, didn’t work either. They just churned out page after page of red and black test prints.

As it was coming up to our holiday, I resolved to fix it when we got back.

Finally, the worm turned

Even more test pages had printed out whilst we’d been away. I went to print something and promptly got a warning. Red ink supply low. Even though I was printing in black and white.

The following day, yet another test page had been printed without me asking for it. The printer now wouldn’t print anything.

Fortunately a couple of years ago, we’d had a free laser printer delivered as part of a promotional deal, but only after I’d bought the HP8500A.

I hooked it up before switching off the HP “refusenik” printer for good.

But that toner cartridge experience wasn’t forgotten, so I was determined to find an affordable solution before supplies ran out again.

However, what I was to discover was far different from what I’d expected…