Printing blues
Recently our ageing HP 1022 printer has been misleading paper. There is a solenoid on the righthand side which controls the feed and the associated spring gets weak. I have stretched it three times so far, each time curing the issue for a while. A new spring is needed and, of course although I have a number of these they are all safely stored in the workshop never to be found!
Coupled to the desire to print in colour and on reasonably thick paper - I'm thinking short ranges of 'special' QSL cards here - after a bit of research I chose a Xerox printer. Reasonable cost and - although as is typical with these things new toner costs more than the printer - aftermarket toner is affordable.
The printer duly arrived and I set up the networking and it tried a test print. This failed to eject all the way and the printer announced it had a paper jam. Ok... try again. Nope. If I eased the sheet out as it was printing all was fine, but it never managed by itself.
I did the usual things. Swearing at the printer failed to cure the issue as I had hoped. DuckDuckGo'ing for answers threw up other people with the same issue but none of their cures worked for me. But it's now, so off to the supplier who helpfully told me the contact number for Xerox. I had already registered the printer via Xerox's own mechanism so all would be fine.
Nope.
After being cut off the first time I spoke to someone who said that although they could see that I had registered the printer their internal systems did not realise and I could not be connected to technical support. I needed to send a proof of purchase, which I did. Some hours later I had a reply that they cannot work with said proof and needed a sales invoice. But it's a private sale - I mean, who these days buys something via the web using PayPal and expects a sales invoice? You get a receipt for payment, then a message about what you are buying, a despatch note etc. I've not seen a sales invoice since I retired.
Anyway, I sent everything I had and have yet to receive a reply that I am allowed to contact their technical people about their printer which arrived faulty. Meanwhile I found the fix on the web using more flowery search terms and the printer now works fine.
Good grief.