A Tale of Two Printers

The first printer was a Canon and it printed beautiful pictures.  That's what I was in the middle of doing.  We had some pictures done recently and I wanted to put them up.  I selected two beautiful pictures, one of each of my children.  My daughter's picture printed, but before my son's could come out, I got an unfixable printer error.  I went online and did everything, every trick I could find.  What I learned was that somehow, between picture one and picture two, the printhead died.  We'd had it a few years, it had done its job.  It was inconvenient, however, because I needed to fill out some forms and email them to someone.  When the printhead went, it killed the scanner part of the printer too. Stress!

Luckily, we had a second printer.  My mother-in-law, a while ago, bought a fancy new printer and gave us her old one, which was still pretty fancy.  I knew one day the Canon would go, so I kept the HP they were giving us.  We used it a few times, but not a lot.  The Canon printed great pictures and was less bulky.  Now that the Canon was dead, it was time to put the HP into full service.  So I thought... The HP was out of ink!  Easy enough fix, though expensive.  In the meantime, the scanner was fully available, so my Hubby printed the forms at work, I filled them out, scanned them and sent there where they need to go.  Yay!  Stress gone!  Until.... I put the ink in the printer.  Print error! Nothing will print! Seriously? How could both printers be dead? Once ink is open, stores aren't supposed to take them back. I tried all the tricks that the internet found for me (again), but nothing worked.  I contacted HP support and they referred me to the same tricks.  When I told them that didn't work, they gave me a number to call.  Then I was hung up on.

So, I called Staples, the company I ordered the ink from.  Why hadn't I called them first? Well, the ink was opened and packaging gone.  After a discussion with a customer service agent, and his discussion with his supervisor, they gave me a credit for the value of the ink.  Now, I will to buy a new printer with my Staples credit.  Probably not an HP, though I have an HP laptop.... Staples was fantastic.  I explained my problem and they helped me out.  Yes, I have to by a printer from them and it's not like the money for the ink is going to detrimentally affect their bottom line, but they could have just said, no. 

It's been a frustrating time.  I thought I had two printers, when it turned out I had zero. I thought I wasted money on printer ink, which we know costs about as much as a new printer.  I was so stressed when I needed to print important things.  I feel like it's all such a waste.  All those electronics and the ink.  I hope the environment doesn't hate me. Buying a new printer is nice though.