As a small business owner I avoid using paper wherever possible, and instead prefer to use email, PDF documents and share documents in the cloud. I do have a need to print out envelopes, invoices and other documents, but my use is very light. My old HP inkjet printer had recently died, so in May 2015 I went to Staples and found a replacement inkjet printer, also from HP called the OfficeJet 6830.
For five months it dutifully worked as designed so printing was routine, however just this past week on the display I saw a message, “Problem with printhead”. Uh oh, that doesn’t sound too good I thought. I tried a few things to remedy the situation:
- Power cycle
- Unseat, then reseat the print cartridges
- Buy new print cartridges
- Reading through the HP support forums
Nothing was working, so I finally phoned the HP support number at 800 474-6836. Ironically the automated system really wanted me to go back to their web site and report the problem, but I persisted and spent the next 25 minutes and 13 seconds on the phone speaking with two different people until the manager said the magic words, “We will ship you a replacement printer at no charge.”
Whew, now that is the kind of customer service that I can live with and talk about. Of course, there was no reason that I had to spend that much time on the phone to persuade HP to fix a problem that they are very aware of, because their user forums are filled with hundreds of identical complaints about “Problem with printhead”. In an ideal world HP would be proactive and issue a product recall, like in the auto industry, then contact me and alert me to the issue and tell me the steps when my printer showed the problem.
In the business world it is very important to keep your customers loyal, because if they love your brand they may just stick with you for decades and start telling all their friends about you in the process.
