Wednesday, January 10, 2007
HP support gets an "A" today
My recent experience with "Support" of any kind has been less than fun lately. Tonight, however, I was pleased. I had a busy day troubleshooting/coding/meetings at work today. I was a little frazzled as I made my way in the door. Upon entering the living room, I found my wife and son upset as they tried to replace the print cartridges in the HP printer. As my wife further annoyed with me with her comments about how the computer and the printer sucks, I began my part-time home computer troubleshooting job. (With steam coming out my ears) I hardly had my coat off as I struggled to figure why the cartridges would not latch on in the printer. After a couple minutes, I realized I needed to turn them a different direction and Yahoo, snap they're in. :) Now I can eat...
After dinner, dug into the question why we get a test page everytime we turn the printer on. I Googled it and got something on the HP site but it didn't look like my answer. I went to the HP site and to support. I searched around the FAQ's and typed in the question. I looked through the first 10 of 250 responses. Screw that. I see they have a chat support but it says they don't support Mac's. I'm on FireFox so I ignore their warning and the chat opens up with no problem. They're a little slow in the chat. It's like they're searching a support site no matter how simple the question. Anyway, we unplug the USB first and I still get a test page. I plug the USB back and then scan the test page. It seems that the printer uses the page with all the lines on it to calibrate the printer. All better. I'm a happy camper. During the chat, he compliments me for helping with troubleshooting. I do this crap all day long is what I say on the inside. On the outside, I just thanked him.
So, try chat out. It's free and no hassle. It's worked for me twice now.
P.S. As I look now at the test page, there's a picture of doing this but the instructions are lame. The instructions are in about 10 different languages but I only speak one and it doesn't say anything about scanning.
After dinner, dug into the question why we get a test page everytime we turn the printer on. I Googled it and got something on the HP site but it didn't look like my answer. I went to the HP site and to support. I searched around the FAQ's and typed in the question. I looked through the first 10 of 250 responses. Screw that. I see they have a chat support but it says they don't support Mac's. I'm on FireFox so I ignore their warning and the chat opens up with no problem. They're a little slow in the chat. It's like they're searching a support site no matter how simple the question. Anyway, we unplug the USB first and I still get a test page. I plug the USB back and then scan the test page. It seems that the printer uses the page with all the lines on it to calibrate the printer. All better. I'm a happy camper. During the chat, he compliments me for helping with troubleshooting. I do this crap all day long is what I say on the inside. On the outside, I just thanked him.
So, try chat out. It's free and no hassle. It's worked for me twice now.
P.S. As I look now at the test page, there's a picture of doing this but the instructions are lame. The instructions are in about 10 different languages but I only speak one and it doesn't say anything about scanning.
