Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Approximately one month ago, I purchased the 6500A plus. Installation was straightforward, and it appeared to operate well. One flaw quickly became apparent, however: whenever the printer sat idle for more than a few minutes, it would subsequently not print. Scouring the available troubleshooting guides in its software, I came across a piece of advice that suggested I turn the printer off, then on again. That worked, except printing documents now required 1) pressing the power button to deactivate sleep mode 2) pressing it once more to turn it off 3) pressing it again to turn the printer on. Quickly, this process became annoying and I looked up HP's customer service # online. Thus began a two hour conversation with one of their technical support reps. The customer service employee I spoke to sounded foreign (later found out he was in the Phillippines) but had a fairly good command of English. However, he misstated a couple of things, and only as I was about to hang up and decided to summarize his earlier statements, did I learn what really was going on. My printer has a known bug, that affects apparently a minority of all of these models; namely, after being turned on for about 5 minutes, the printer quickly enters sleep mode and does not come out of it when you go to print. The representative looked for a work around in the, and I'm not making this up, "underwear" settings, and began to see how to fix "energy saving mode" (what he called it instead of "sleep mode"). He sounded like he was clueless. Then we went through several trials where he asked me to press button after button on the keypad, which lasted about 15 minutes. In between instructions, he put me on hold to confer with colleagues and search online forums. The keypad buttons he told me to press did absolutely nothing....the printer did not respond whatsoever. I might have well as been tapping on the desk. I asked if I could receive a replacement, to which he replied no, as this defect did not warrant one. However he said he could help me get an upgrade, but would not elaborate. I then asked to speak to a supervisor. A period of a few minutes of silence ensued where he did not respond, and I thought he may have disconnected. Suddenly, he came on the line and suggest he could offer me a replacement, but not an upgrade. One hour later, after being given incorrect service tag #'s, and more frustration, I finished the conversation and am expecting a replacement in about a week. Oh, and before hanging up he told me his name was Peggy. If only. 12/23/10 Update: I received the new printer today, installed it, and it appears to work properly. Once left idle for several minutes, the printer enters sleep mode, and subsequently jumps to life when I go to print (as it should). At this point I'd like to make a couple more observations: The printer does not come with a paper copy of a user guide. The user guide is a software version, and the search option is inferior. By comparison to Google, it looks like it was designed by 3rd graders. After some effort, though, I discovered that energy saving mode totally different from sleep mode. The entire goal of "Peggy's" help was to deactivate or delay energy saving mode. That would not have affected sleep mode (nor my printers' problems) in the slightest! HP has some serious customer service issues if their employees are so ill-informed they don't understand the basic features of their own printers. FYI: Energy saving mode will turn off the processor and firmware when the printer is turned off, in order to cut down on electricity usage. Sleep mode, on the other hand, deactivates the lcd and enables the printer to use less electricity while still on. Energy saving mode can be turned off through one of the lcd sub-menus, while sleep mode cannot be. 7/26/11 The printer continues to work well 95% of the time. Once in a while, the printer hangs up and does not copy/print. In those cases, turning the machine off and back on has solved the issue. As I saw stated in another review, the USB cable does not come with this printer. However, I was provided one with the extended service package through Office Max. Additionally, I cannot comment on the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of the wireless capabilities, as I have not used them. After some thought, I've decided to change my review to 2 stars, knocking 1.5 stars off for product related issues: the initial sleep-mode defect, the continued random errors, the lack of decent user manual and no USB cable included, and another 1.5 stars for the inane customer service.