Beautiful Print when printed large

I have an HP Designjet Z3100.  At the time I acquired it, it had rave reviews, was frugal with ink, great color gamut.  To my way of thinking this was a great printer, the only downside, is that for a personal printer it is BIG.      This is a production machine, with a much higher duty cycle than I use it at, but I wanted a large format printer.  I have printed some large 24″ by 70″ panoramas that I just love and folks go oo and ah over.  Nice prints. There is one other problem, it is from HP.

I have had nothing but horror stories when it comes to HP and support.

Some years ago, I bought a high end laptop to take on photo expeditions so that I could look at the photos.  A month after I bought it, the hard drive died.  I opened it up, and they were the cheapest hard drive made at the time, with a poor quality reputation.  Not what I would have expected for paying more than $6K for a laptop.   I bought a new drive, and installed it.  It only took HP 3 months to send the install CDs….  And I turned in the bad drive when it died.  It took another 8 months for them to replace the original hard drive.  It also took about 40 hours on the phone with India and corporate.  It was only resolved when I went to the CEO.

Support for the Z3100… Bad, but not quite as bad.  When Windows 7 came out.  HP announced that it would not be upgrading its drivers to support Windows 7.  We were told buy a new printer… Fat chance I would spend another $5K to $6K for an HP printer that they will not support.  Eventually HP relented, and a year later, we had drivers for Windows 7.  Again, a note to the CEO.  Not sure if that is what changed the corporate policy or not, or if the note was incidental.

I have talked to way too many support people and managers, most well intentioned although several were slavishly tied to a script.  A very few of these, typically in the DesignJet group itself were actually helpful.

The latest in the ongoing horrors of HP support.

• PROBLEM: The drive belt was disintegrating and essentially the printer stopped working.
• OK, I had been through a similar problem (and slightly smaller nightmare) a year ago.
  • Buy a service contract so that HP support will even talk with you, report the problem and someone comes out and fixes it.
  • I went online looked around and found a $750 / year service contract for the Z3x00 printers. Great.  Bought the service contract.  Before you can use an HP Service contract you have to register it. Fine, So I called up to register it.  They had no record that I had bought it, even though I had a receipt from HP with all of the info.  Several days of calling finally they found it and promised that it would be registered.
  • When none of the online systems showed that I had a service pack I called some more, again after multiple calls and messages and emails the result was I had bought an “In warranty Service Contract” and my printer was out of warranty.
  • OK, let’s buy an “out of warranty Service Contract”, I thought, OK I will buy a 2 year one for $1400.   The person was reluctant to sell it to me because it read  for Z3x00 printers, not Z3100.  Eventually her tech guy told her it was OK.
  • Still have not gotten the refund for the first service contract
  • Go to register the second service contract.  Again no record that I had bought one, even though I PDF’d the docs and sent them to HP.
  • More phone calls, and oh, they did find it, and yes it is registered…. HURRAY… I can now finally call HP support to get my printer fixed.
  • The guy is scheduled.  The day before he is scheduled to show up, he calls and tells me that he has been told that he must charge time and materials because they have no record of me having bought a service contract.
  • I email the technician copies of the contract and registration numbers.  He does not come to fix the printer.
  • Several days later, I get a bill for $809 time and materials, that states I have only 48 hours to act on this.  Printer still not fixed.
  • More emails to HP, escalate to the office of the president (which is what it took to get the laptop fixed).
  •  I get a phone call from a nice lady, Michelle, who is a customer advocate….
  • Here is the long and the short.
    • The printer will only be supported for another year, so I can’t buy a 2 year contract, even though I did.
    • They would work to refund each of the prior purchased service contracts (still waiting on this)
    • To get the printer fixed I would have to do time and materials ($809), which they needed to bill now.
    • A year from now, the printer will no longer be supported.
    • Conclusions:
      • Any thoughts on what I won’t buy?