Dinner out & Lexmark customer service

[dagibbs]

Took my parents out to dinner last night. We went to Fratelli's, a fairly nice Italian restaurant here in Ottawa. We all enjoyed the meal, food and service were both excellent. Tab came to $105, but that was ok, as I chose Fratelli's due to having a $75 gift certificate. (From the company Christmas party, a door prize.) I had thought the $75 generous, but, really, with tip, a meal there would be about $40 a person, so $75 would be a reasonable meal for two. (All three of us had wine, entree, main dish, and tea.)

I got a "free with rebate" Lexmark printer with the computer I bought in January. The first time L (my room-mate) went to replace a print cartridge, the latch broke. L called Lexmark support, after about 40 minutes on hold, got a real person who said they'd send us a new printer, along with a pre-paid return tag for the old, and that it would be here in 3-5 business days. No hassle about doing the return or anything, as soon as the problem was described they offered the replacement. The replacement took 2 days to get here. Both L and I are quite impressed and happy with Lexmark customer service.

Comments

[elizilla]

My Lexmark printer story is different. Have you noticed that a set of their print cartridges costs as much as a new printer? I don't print very often, and the cartridges were drying out at an alarming rate. Seemed like every time I printed I had to either clean the print heads or replace a cartridge. Considering how much use I got out of each cartridge before it dried out, it was costing me about $5 per page to print, and it required way too much messing around.

The Epson I had before I had the Lexmark didn't dry its cartridges out like that.

I replaced my Lexmark with a laser printer that cost about the same as two sets of Lexmark inkjet cartridges. My new printer only prints black and white, no color, but it's quiet, quick, and it doesn't require messing with, so I am now using it a lot more.

I took the Lexmark to ConClave and tried to give it away, but no one wanted it. Jeff Beeler finally took it because he knew a charity where he could drop it off.

Re:

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

Ah...yes the printer cartridge thing. Well, we'll see how those hold up, or whether I've got the same problem. Maybe laser printers do better...but it seems that most/all the makers of ink-jet type printers break-even/lose money on the actual printer, but make their profit margins on the cartridges.

I wanted to note that their customer service was good.

I didn't intend this to be an endorsement of their printer quality, or of the business model that seems prevalent in the home-printer market.

Re:

[elizilla]

I never used their tech support. Their website was pretty good with the description of how to clean the print cartridges.

I've had great luck with the customer service from HP and Epson.