I have received letters of commiseration about my problems with my new acquisition, a $36.00 Printer from HP.  I have additional news since the friends I have made in far off places had nothing to offer me besides friendship.  They were unable to explain why my new printer refused to accept the larger black ink cartridges which saved me money and time.  So, I tried another solution - give the machine back.

I tried giving my machine back after explaining my troubles and tribulations to various individuals who told me to hold while they consulted with higher ups.  This happened several times with no signs that what I was complaining about had answers.  So, I decided to get rid of the problem by sending the defective printer back to HP (J4500 series) and using my old HP printer (2400 series) which I had kept and which had nothing seriously wrong with it.  When I installed it in place of the J4500, it worked perfectly.  My agreement with HP was that they would refund me my $36.00 and the cost of the cartridges I had bought because the black ones seemed to empty out as soon as they were installed - with the exception of the long-lived J4500XL (Black) - which worked fine, emptied slowly until the machine awoke and told me that it could not accept the large cartridge.

I found some HP manager who agreed with me that I could send the machine and its cartridges back to them and I would be reimbursed.  I felt sort of liberated and was happy with my older printer which worked perfectly well but without the bells and whistles the J4500 had.  Then I got a call from HP asking for specifics about the communications with their workers in Mumbai and Manila.  Thankfully, I had at hand a slip of paper I jotted notes on with all the ticket numbers and references that showed I really had spent a lot of time on the phone talking to the other side of the world about my little cheapie printer.  Despite its faults, I love it still.  It has this easy to use provision to print on both sides of a sheet of paper.  Well, that is how it goes - sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.

My printer problem has been solved by simply giving up and giving back and I am lucky to have HP willing to accept my version of my hours of fruitless tying up our phone. I talked to some very nice people who seemed to understand me while I had difficulty hearing and understanding them.  Carol got into it at the end and hears much better than I do.  Between us, we got across the idea that I am boxing up my latest J4500 and will send it back by Fed Ex who will come to our apartment, pick it up and send it on its way back to HP.  I hope that HP will be able sort out why this machine doesn't like the Black XP ink cartridge.