I replaced the black ink cartridge on my Hewlett Packard Deskjet and with that it only prints partial characters with white horizontal lines.  I tried three other cartridges then e-mailed from HP.com asking for their advice.  Their site says they care and want to hear from customers.

After filling in their form I waited 10 days and got no response.

So I went shopping for a new printer. HP has had a good reputation (apparently not for customer service) so I called their shop-by-phone number. After speaking with a salesman, I decided to buy a new HP printer. The only problem was HP was out of stock!

The salesman said he would send me a free cartridge to reimburse me for my trouble with the others.  He asked me to wait to buy -- he would get the printers in soon and he would call me.

It has now been over another week that I am without a printer. I called him back to hear his story. When I reached him he said he had sent the cartridge out. The problem with that was he really didn't.

A few days later I called again to see if HP had any HP printers in stock. After waiting on hold for 25 minutes, I was disconnected. I called back, waited 15 minutes on hold, and finally reached my salesman who admitted he hadn't sent the cartridges.

He promised that he will phone me when he gets some printers in stock and ship it with a cartridge.

It's not worth the trouble.

Maybe a Lexmark, Epson or Brand X from Office Depot?

P. Grass, psg1@worldnet.att.net