the good old days

I am the angry, disappointed owner of a Lexmark P6250 “All In One” printer. It scans, copies, and prints. (One thing that MOST printers of the all-in-one variety manage is to fax, as well; it’s my own fault for not thoroughly researching the specs before buying, but this one does not. However, Lexmark still loses points for making an all-in-one that’s really a most-in-one.)

It’s worked decently for two years. Then, suddenly, it starts having an intermittent problem… a big blank smear down the left side of any scan I try to make. Since I have an almost-paperless home office system, not being able to scan in and digitally store bills is a huge hassle. And since I got a big pile of family genealogy information that I need to scan in and share with cousins, it’s an even bigger hassle. I can usually only get about three pages scanned before the Big White Smear shows up, and then it’s done for the day.

Troubleshooting suggested cleaning the printer heads (?), making sure the printer is connected to the computer (?!?), and similarly pointless baloney. A tech support ticket was the only resort available. After suggesting that the “factory default settings” should be restored (and leaving me to wonder what possible setting could have been modified to have the scanner ignore 40% of the desired image) with no success, they revealed… that the printer is broken.

I know, shocking, right?

I asked about spare parts…

The issue appears to be with the scanner hardware, probably the scanner bulb.

Regarding the replacement part, I regret inform you that we do not carry a stock of spare parts for this printer model. Technology has allowed us to reduce the price of printers drastically; therefore, the cost of spare parts would exceed the cost of a new printer.

Anyone familiar with basic math should laugh in disbelief at this point. Printers are made of parts. Therefore, the cost of a printer can not be less than the cumulative cost of its parts. Therefore, each part has to cost less than a new printer; otherwise, Lexmark is selling printers at a drastic loss. Bullshit. They’re a business, not a charity.

So what’s really behind their disinterest in selling spare parts? They want you to buy the (probably more expensive) new printer when your old one dies. This is a peripheral, for pete’s sake, I don’t want to buy a new one every two years.

It’s not terribly likely that most (all?) other scanner/printer suppliers will provide better support for their products, but trying to spin me bullshit about “the end item costs less than its components” is one of the best ways to get me to never, ever buy from you again. The petty little bullshit, like making it difficult to convince the printer to use black ink only (it really prefers to print “black” using the more-expensive CMYK cartridge) and not having any fax functionality and a half-assed “troubleshooting” section of the manual, those were just petty annoyances. But making it unrepairable? Fuck you.

I am going to be buying a (probably more expensive) new peripheral, but it sure won’t be from Lexmark. Ever again.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 13th, 2008 at 9:38 am and is filed under conservation & environment, corporate nonsense, load of hooey, new technologies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.