HP Printers Region-Coding nonsense

[Digitalle]

About 6 months back I was in the market for a new printer, did my research and decided on the HP 6980. Did a bit more browsing for the best deals, and found an American company doing a great deal, even with the shipping deal to the UK it was still like £40 cheaper than here.

Anyway, it came, set it up and its been awesome ever since...until:

A couple of weeks back, starting getting low ink levels. Thats fine I had been using it a lot, so went on the HP website, looked up and bought the ink cartridges for my printer. HP 343 and 337.

When they came, I installed them and all I got was a 'ink cartridge is of an incorrect type' message in the printer status. I thought that is strange, and when I looked at the cartridges I took out they were HP 97 and 99!!

Turns out, about the same time I bought the printer HP started regionalising both their printers and Ink. Which means...although I have the EXACT same printer as the European version, I have to buy 97 & 99 cartridges for the USA at about 3 times the price, even though they are IDENTICAL to the 300 series ones over here.

Anyone else had any problems like this or have any ideas of how I can solve it?

 

[JonJ678]

Contacting HP and asking what they think they're playing at sounds the way to go.

Otherwise, the region coding is done by the electronics on the cartridge. It's probably possible to flash from the working ones to the UK ones, or move the circuitry across physically.

 

[ETNiES]

Now that is what you call bad luck! I hate printers, If I ever need to print anything I always use a friends or internet cafe, simply because they cost so much for ink.

 

[Dano]

HP printer software seems to massively extend boot times these days too, so much uneeded junk.