r/HP_Printers

HP's firmware update permanently shut down my Officejet 4650 printer. Has anyone else experienced this?

A few weeks ago, I had an HP printer, and it was working fine. I had just finished writing my book, and I began printing it. But halfway-through, the printing mysteriously stopped.

That was odd...

I thought that maybe the internet went out. But no... The internet was working just fine. And then I saw a message on my printer's screen. It said something about an update, and that it might take a few minutes. So I waited a few minutes. But every time I tried to print my book, the same error message kept popping up. ''Cannot Connect to Server'' or something. So I waited some more. And more. And more.

After a few hours of waiting a few minutes, I realized I needed to have a chat with HP customer service. Little did I know what I was getting into... So I had a chat with a nice, blissfully unaware customer care lady that lived in a far away land. She asked me many questions, and made me do all sorts of things to my printer. It lasted well over an hour. In the end she told me I should unplug my router. That would help, she said. But it did not help. Instead, what happened was exactly what I feared, (and told her) would happen: I got disconnected from my chat.

And so, I had to start all over again... And so I tried calling HP again. And again. And again. I spent many hours explaining my situation over and over again to many poor souls across the globe who barely spoke English and didn't have a clue what the company they work for was actually doing. At some point I was told by a manager that the Escalation Department would call me back.

Finally! After all this trouble, I would get closure.

 

But the Escalation Department never called me back... Instead, I kept receiving mysterious emails saying my cases were being closed.

That was odd. Why were my cases being closed? My printer was not fixed...

 

Anyhow... By that time I pretty much knew that the problems I was experiencing originated from HP's servers, not my printer.

Then someday, after calling HP for the hundredth time, I managed to get transferred to a technical supervisor. The supervisor spoke pretty good English, which was refreshing, and confirmed that I was not insane. What I was experiencing was indeed related to HP servers, and not my printer itself. He also told me that this was a major priority for HP, and that it would be fixed very soon. All I could do was wait. And so I waited, and tried printing, and waited, and waited, and tried printing.

You get the idea.

After over a week of this annoying pattern, my printer would still not print. So I called HP once more...

I was not happy at all by that time, as you might have guessed, having to explain my situation again to low-level customer service people who had no idea about anything I had been through. It was hard to keep my cool, and I might have used some bad words here and there...

But I persevered, and I managed to speak to another HP technical supervisor named Milo. Milo told me he would look into the matter and contact me. Then, a few days later, he got back to me and explained the issue. Milo used a lot of fancy words to tell me that my issue had to do with the HP Dynamic Security update and the HP plus initiative, and that I needed to get a new printer.

That did not compute in my brain, and it seemed plainly illegal. I had a printer, HP deactivated it, and now I need to buy a new printer? What?!

So I began to look into all the tools at my disposal. Surely, even a multinational corporation like HP cannot do anything it wants without consequences. Life has thought me that only progressive governments can do whatever they want without any consequences. ( I live in French Canada, believe me, I know...)

So I figured I would notify the relevant government agencies about my problems.

But first, I needed more information. So I asked Milo a few questions: 

You mentioned my printer lost synchronization with HP's cloud server. Is that permanent? Is there any way to restore it?

Is the OfficeJet 4650 now considered end-of-life by HP? If so, when was that decision made, and why were customers not notified?

If I were to purchase a new HP printer, what guarantee do I have that the same thing won't happen again?

I look forward to your detailed response, Milo. The answers to these questions will go a long way in helping me decide how to proceed.

Those were all very legitimate questions. But Milo did not answer any of them. Instead, Milo closed my case and ghosted me.

I won't lie to you. Milo's ghosting, after weeks of struggle, is what made this situation personal. It stopped being about a printer entirely. And so I decided to actually invest energy to seek justice for the many thousands of poor schmucks that HP tosses around every day.

 So I wrote a thorough PIPEDA request (the Canadian equivalent of an FOIA request) and sent it to Privacy@hp.com. I also wrote a thorough notice of demand. I sent all these documents to:

• the board of directors (bod@hp.com)
• the head lawyer Julie.Jacobs@hp.com
• the CEO of HP Canada Mary.Ann.Yule@hp.com
• the President of HP Solutions Manoj.Leelanivas@hp.com
• the Senior Vice President and Managing Director for North America George.Brasher@hp.com

( It turns out you can just find out who the director of a department at HP is, add dots after his or her names, and u/hp*.com, and you can actually reach out personally to every HP executive. How thoughtful of them...)*

I also filed a formal complaint with the Canadian Competition Bureau and the Quebec Consumer Protection Office. A couple hours later, (not days, hours! ) I got a reply from Joshwa Sanjeev, Executive Escalation Manager — Americas. I thought: ''wow, what a nice title, surely, I will be heard now... ''

 

But it was not so.

What followed was a documented pattern of deliberate misdirection. Joshwa offered to go through the same nonsense connection resetting, just like incompetent frontline reps had tried for hours and hours. He then proceeded to gaslight me into believing my printer's failure was caused by the use of non-HP cartridges. But I have never used a non-HP cartridge.

Here is what HP knew while this was happening. Through a formal PIPEDA access request — the Canadian equivalent of a freedom of information request — I obtained HP's internal records. Among them: New II Alert 260407, an internal HP service alert titled Gen 1 Printers Losing Connection to Web Services. HP's own documentation confirmed that the failure affecting my device was systemic, affecting the entire Generation 1 product line. I have also obtained the records of the customer services phone calls in which HP representatives confirmed this explicitly.

Joshwa Sanjeev, the highest level service rep at HP, as he himself confirmed in writing, knows very well that my printer doesn't have a hardware issue. My printer is considered End-of-Life by HP. (That's also in the files they had to send me.)

So...

After about a month and a half of fighting with HP, they finally made me an "offer," if you can call it that. A refurbished printer to replace my now dysfunctional unit.

A working printer is what I had before going through all this $hit! At this point, I'd rather just see HP be held accountable for their deceptive practices. So I politely told them "LMAO." And Joshwa told me the issue was then considered closed, since I refused his offer at resolution.

So I wrote a new PIPEDA request!  (They really have to answer those. The penalty can go up to 4% of their worldwide revenues, so they are pretty reliable in that domain...) I am now demanding all files related in any way, shape or form to my executive escalation case, and everything related to New II Alert 260407. I also filed a formal ethics complaint against Joshwa with HP's ethics commissioner, reported his lying to the board of directors, and wrote down my story.

This Monday morning, Joshwa will learn that my case is, in fact, not closed.

 

TL;DR: HP's firmware update remotely bricked my working OfficeJet 4650 mid-print. Weeks of customer service runaround, closed cases, and executive ghosting followed — until I hit back with PIPEDA (Canadian privacy FOIA) requests, complaints to two Canadian regulatory bodies, and formal notices to HP's board and top executives. Their own internal documents confirm this was a known, systemic failure affecting the entire Generation 1 product line. When their Executive Escalation Manager tried to gaslight me anyway, I filed an ethics complaint against him, reported him to the board, and made clear his "case closed" wasn't my case closed. To be continued...

I’m hoping someone here has seen this because my HP printer has started behaving in a way that makes absolutely no sense. It recently began taking an unusually long time to start printing and the delay feels like it is preparing for some huge task that never actually happens. It makes warm up noises that are familiar but the duration is far beyond what it used to do. At first I thought it was a one time glitch but it has happened every day this week. It almost behaves as if it wants to function like a photocopy machine even when I am only trying to print a simple page. I have not changed anything in my setup. Same desk same WiFi same paper and the same cartridges. I checked inside to make sure nothing was blocking the rollers and everything looks clean. I restarted the printer and the network equipment and nothing changed. It still acts like it is preparing for something big instead of just printing a document. I did come across posts on Facebook marketplace nd Alibaba describing similar behavior although no one shared a reliable explanation. Before I start resetting everything to factory settings I wanted to ask this community for ideas. What could cause this?