
I bought this printer in September 2009 and had I reviewed it shortly thereafter would have given it 5 stars. It's wonderful when it works. Unfortunately, it didn't work for long. I started receiving a "paper jam" message on October 27th, although there was no paper jam to be found. Called tech support. I am now aware that I was incredibly lucky to get an actual tech support agent in less than 30 minutes. He said they would send a replacement printer. Although he said they call them refurbished, they are essentially new printers that have been returned from stores, checked by HP, but they are no longer allowed to call them new. I was hesitant to accept a "refurbished" but decided to trust what he had said.
I received the replacement printer within a few days and was able to set it up to the point where I could print a test page. As I had hoped, the pages printed said 2 total, both of which I had done. So HP isn't pulling anything over on us by sending a used, refurbished printer for our almost-new ones that fail. Problem was, the Pro 8500 Premier is an A909n. The replacement HP sent was an A909g, a printer which the tech told me was about $100 less. But before I could get to a technician to complete the setup (message was that the printer was offline even though it was on my network and I had confirmed the successful setup by printing a page to tell me that), I was on hold one evening for over THREE HOURS!!! And I have iPhone screen shots to prove it, which I may try to figure out how to attach to this review. It was just unbelievable. Finally at 11:43pm I decided that even if I were lucky enough to ever have an HP tech respond, I was too tired to go through any sort of diagnostics with him/her.
I called the next day, and after a MERE 48 minutes on hold, a tech answered. He's the one who figured out they had sent me the wrong model. FYI, there are three different models of this printer. I believe they're all A909, but there's an 'A' 'G' and 'N' series. You can tell which one you have easily by opening the print cartridge door. There's a sticker on the part of the door that folds down.
I received my second replacement printer today, November 5th, and could not get it even to the alignment stage. After 48 minutes on hold my call was somehow disconnected, so I decided to try live chat. After a considerable wait of 30-45 minutes, a live chat tech rep finally responded. We went through thing after thing for over two hours, and still could not get rid of the "paper jam" message, which is exactly what the problem was with the original printer.
Be aware that when HP sends you the replacement printer, they send the bare minimum: You have to remove everything that's removable, and one piece that you wouldn't think is removable; the faceplate. I believe the duplexer part may be the problem, but after two hours on chat, the result of that was "We'll have a hardware technician call you within an hour." It's been over an hour and no call.
I loved this printer while it worked, but the honeymoon is over, over, over ..... I won't ever buy HP again, primarily because of the customer service, or lack thereof, I should more accurately say.Get more detail about
HP Officejet Pro 8500 Premier Wireless All-in-One Printer.