Hewlett Packard LaserJet 2840 Printer
- Black Print Speed: 20 ppm
- Color Print Speed: 4 ppm
- Output Type: Color Printer
- Technology (Detailed): Color Laser
- Printer Type: Workgroup Printer
- All-in-One Functions: Copier Fax Machine Scanner
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Avoid this printer at all costs!
Pros
An all in one color laser at a reasonable cost
Cons
Printing costs are outrageous and HP?s idea of customer service is a complete joke.
Recommended it?
No
The Bottom Line:
If you must, only purchase from a HP rep. It may help with service. If you intend to print much, this printer will eat you out of house and home.
Our recent experience with HP has been shockingly bad. For those not familiar with us, we are a small print shop in Downtown McKinney. We purchased the HP 2810 about 5 months prior to this incident to print stationary as part of our business. My complaints about the 2840 had been it prints a little slower than really needed for our business and the cost of printing is outrageous.
The toner cartridges are about $90 and are rated for 2,000 pages. And I mean PAGES. There is a counter in each toner cartridge and when it cycles 2,000 times it is time to replace it. But the "big daddy" cost is the imaging drum which costs $270 and is only rated for 8,000 pages. But wait, there is more. If you print in color, each "color" is a page of life from the 8,000. So a single page with black and color (each printed color is typically a mix of the three primary colors) it counts as 4 pages as far as the imaging drum in concerned.
So if you use the 2840 to print color, after about 2,000 pages you are looking at about $600 to replace the color cartridges and the imaging drum, for a print cost of 30 cents per page. That's as bad as going to Kinkos.
And as bad as all this is, it is nothing compared to HP service!
Our actual saga started when I replaced the magenta toner cartridge. Immediately after this, the printer only printed on the right half of the page. After some internet research, I discovered this can happen, although a bit of a freak event. Changing a toner cartridge can mis-align the cartridge carrousel and only professional can fix it, but in about 15 minutes.
We called the support number and HP scheduled a technician to fix it.
The technician came the next day and despite all his efforts, could not get the unit to print on the entire page. He diagnosed it as a bad carrousel and had to order one. The next day the technician returns, changes the carrousel, but the non-printing is unchanged. He then notices a non-HP toner cartridge (but the Magenta that started the whole mess was), says we have voided our warrantee (not true by FTC regulations) and leaves.
At this point I call the support number and complain. So they send him back out the next day to try new things and to replace "all the toner cartridges" (an important part to note).
Whatever he did does get the printer printing all across the page, but now the printer is making a loud electrical noise ALL THE TIME which is loud enough to be very uncomfortable to the ear and now the printer text is not sharp. Small fonts are blurry and blotchy.
So we call HP again, but the previous technician is tired of trying to figure out what is wrong with the printer and hands it over to a new guy, who showed up today (exactly one week after the initial visit).
He says the cause of the printing problem is a non-HP black toner cartridge (except technician #1 said he replaced ALL the toner cartridges!!!), and says our printer is not capable of printing sharp text! And to top it off he claims he cannot hear the loud electrical noise, yet it is plenty loud to everyone else including our customers.
I have to call HP again and they agree electrical noises and fuzzy print don't come standard on this model and agree to send the technician out again.
Two days went by while HP thought about what to do, and then the printer reported that the black ink cartridge was "missing" and printer of course would not function. Removing and re-seating cartridge did not clear the problem. I would put an old black cartridge back in but the service techs took the two old ones with them.
After reporting to HP the latest problem, the second technician called to say he will come the next day but again reiterated that printer replacement is not possible with HP. They will fix what you have NO MATTER HOW LONG IT TAKES!
Two days later the original technician called to say he would at the store Monday with more parts sure to fix the problem. Monday comes (two weeks after the original service call) and has so many boxes in his arms I literally thought he was the UPS guy. He replaced every replaceable part on the printer (the second time all the replicable parts were changed) and it still reported the black toner cartridge to be missing.
At this point I just felt pity for him. I was only at the store because I had purchased a new Xerox 8560 printer and was setting it up, and he clearly wanted to fix the printer but was still denied. I asked him to take the 2840 with him and the tech said that HP may now decide to give us a new one.
We did not hear anything back for about a week when the tech called again. It turns out he took our printer home for a week and tinkered with it in his spare time. He did not report what finally did the trick but he did solve the problem. Now our HP 2840 is in our home office.
Bottom line, it took about 4 weeks total to get the printer fixed, and took numerous calls to HP central to even get that. Their goal was to make it such a bother on us that we would just go buy another printer. Which we did actually, but not an HP.
www.posylane.com
The toner cartridges are about $90 and are rated for 2,000 pages. And I mean PAGES. There is a counter in each toner cartridge and when it cycles 2,000 times it is time to replace it. But the "big daddy" cost is the imaging drum which costs $270 and is only rated for 8,000 pages. But wait, there is more. If you print in color, each "color" is a page of life from the 8,000. So a single page with black and color (each printed color is typically a mix of the three primary colors) it counts as 4 pages as far as the imaging drum in concerned.
So if you use the 2840 to print color, after about 2,000 pages you are looking at about $600 to replace the color cartridges and the imaging drum, for a print cost of 30 cents per page. That's as bad as going to Kinkos.
And as bad as all this is, it is nothing compared to HP service!
Our actual saga started when I replaced the magenta toner cartridge. Immediately after this, the printer only printed on the right half of the page. After some internet research, I discovered this can happen, although a bit of a freak event. Changing a toner cartridge can mis-align the cartridge carrousel and only professional can fix it, but in about 15 minutes.
We called the support number and HP scheduled a technician to fix it.
The technician came the next day and despite all his efforts, could not get the unit to print on the entire page. He diagnosed it as a bad carrousel and had to order one. The next day the technician returns, changes the carrousel, but the non-printing is unchanged. He then notices a non-HP toner cartridge (but the Magenta that started the whole mess was), says we have voided our warrantee (not true by FTC regulations) and leaves.
At this point I call the support number and complain. So they send him back out the next day to try new things and to replace "all the toner cartridges" (an important part to note).
Whatever he did does get the printer printing all across the page, but now the printer is making a loud electrical noise ALL THE TIME which is loud enough to be very uncomfortable to the ear and now the printer text is not sharp. Small fonts are blurry and blotchy.
So we call HP again, but the previous technician is tired of trying to figure out what is wrong with the printer and hands it over to a new guy, who showed up today (exactly one week after the initial visit).
He says the cause of the printing problem is a non-HP black toner cartridge (except technician #1 said he replaced ALL the toner cartridges!!!), and says our printer is not capable of printing sharp text! And to top it off he claims he cannot hear the loud electrical noise, yet it is plenty loud to everyone else including our customers.
I have to call HP again and they agree electrical noises and fuzzy print don't come standard on this model and agree to send the technician out again.
Two days went by while HP thought about what to do, and then the printer reported that the black ink cartridge was "missing" and printer of course would not function. Removing and re-seating cartridge did not clear the problem. I would put an old black cartridge back in but the service techs took the two old ones with them.
After reporting to HP the latest problem, the second technician called to say he will come the next day but again reiterated that printer replacement is not possible with HP. They will fix what you have NO MATTER HOW LONG IT TAKES!
Two days later the original technician called to say he would at the store Monday with more parts sure to fix the problem. Monday comes (two weeks after the original service call) and has so many boxes in his arms I literally thought he was the UPS guy. He replaced every replaceable part on the printer (the second time all the replicable parts were changed) and it still reported the black toner cartridge to be missing.
At this point I just felt pity for him. I was only at the store because I had purchased a new Xerox 8560 printer and was setting it up, and he clearly wanted to fix the printer but was still denied. I asked him to take the 2840 with him and the tech said that HP may now decide to give us a new one.
We did not hear anything back for about a week when the tech called again. It turns out he took our printer home for a week and tinkered with it in his spare time. He did not report what finally did the trick but he did solve the problem. Now our HP 2840 is in our home office.
Bottom line, it took about 4 weeks total to get the printer fixed, and took numerous calls to HP central to even get that. Their goal was to make it such a bother on us that we would just go buy another printer. Which we did actually, but not an HP.
www.posylane.com
