HP Tech Support

Everyone knows that companies outsource their tech support to India. There's no secret about that. However, I was particularly annoyed about the help I got from HP.

Here's the thing: we got an Officejet 6500. It's a terrific machine, but it has issues when trying to print from QuickBooks Point of Sale. It will sometimes work, and other times it will act like it printed something and make a beep sound like it finished, even though it printed nothing. After playing with it for several hours, I found someone on the internet who had this issue and started using a Deskjet 990 driver with the Officejet 6500 to get it working properly. I tried it and found that it indeed made it print (we can't say for certain that there won't be any further problems, but so far, it appears to be working.)

It was suggested to me by my step-mom that I call HP tech support before making any changes to the computer. I agreed, and for the next 98 minutes and 57 seconds, I was on the telephone. I got this lady who was trying to help me. What I didn't realize at the time was it was her first day on the job, and as luck would have it, I was her first customer. Oh boy!

Her computer crashed about an hour into the session, so we had to start from the beginning by me giving my name, zip code, and other information. Each time I'd answer a question, it would take her a few minutes to go to the next step.

When we finally got to the part where she takes control of my computer, we tried several times to print a document. It never worked. Finally, she adds a new printer. She picks the Deskjet 990 (which was the default on the screen since I had previously added it.) We tried printing, and what do you know, it printed. Wow, I didn't see that coming. That was the solution. That. After all of that trouble, the bass-ackwards solution I already found was the conclusion of the session.

I just wasted 99 minutes of my life away talking to some lady from India for nothing. I didn't complain, I was very nice to her, particularly since it was her first day. Still, I felt quite annoyed that I did that for nothing.

So the conclusion I have come to is there must be something wrong with the HP Officejet 6500 driver. The driver is dated March 2009, so it's definitely new. I'm hoping they fix whatever is wrong, because I feel more than a little funny about using a driver that wasn't made specifically for it.