This issue has been posed on this forum several times before—those posts were liked and seconded by other users, yet there is no good answer to this issue on the HP Support Forum.
So, let me summarize my issue: I researched this printer before purchasing and spoke to someone at HP, who assured me this printer could do the two things I wanted: scan and print efficiently in draft mode. And guess what, from day 1, “draft” mode looked almost exactly the same as “best” mode. I tried to ignore it and uninstall, reinstall printer and drivers per instructions on this forum, which did not work. (I purchased the printer at the beginning of the pandemic, so going around to stores, FedEx, etc for returns wasn’t really an option at the time.) Finally, I decided to contact HP. After hours one evening on live message chat and hours the next day on the telephone, with techs telling me, night one: “It is probably the cartridge. We’ll send a new cartridge.” (It isn’t the cartridge. I can change the color to gray and print my own do-it-yourself draft mode, so the cartridge can perform.) The next day, a tech was having me uninstall the printer and drivers (yet again) and reinstall with other HP drivers. That did not work either. Finally, after saying that I intended to tell all of my hundreds of college students every semester to stay away from HP if they prefer not to waste money, I was connected with a supervisor. This man was very nice, and he explained that a “draft” mode like what I expected (and asked about before purchasing) wasn’t really available on this model b/c it was made for printing pictures. So the draft mode is still very high-quality (i.e. lots of ink).
So, why didn’t the techs tell me this hours before? Are they instructed not to provide customers this info? Do they not know how their own company’s printers work? Either way, the experience has been AWFUL. And I feel like HP purposefully deceives its customers. Right here on this very forum, you will see other customers complaining about the ridiculous amt of ink consumed by this printer: Hfelder from 4/2020 and WayneBrock from 10/2019. And Mort65’s post from 2/2019 titled, “HP Envy printer 5055 consumes too much ink.” None of these posts have an answer or have been marked “Solved.” And the HP respondents to these posts keep mentioning draft mode as an option to reduce ink usage. And keep making customers believe that draft mode, when used, will actually reduce ink usage.
HP, you should be ashamed. It is a dirty trick. You sell the printer as “versatile” and capable of producing “affordable prints” and “everyday documents.” You tell your customers they can save ink by printing in draft mode. But draft mode, the way one would commonly expect draft mode to function, does not exist. Per my own research, I have found that draft mode on this model prints faster but uses nearly the same amount of ink! No one mentioned that to me when I was researching the product or spending hours on the line with tech support. The cost of ink to run this printer will be more than the cost of the printer in 1-2 months. Seriously, it is that bad. And, no, I do not want to enroll in InstantInk. I want HP to act like a company that isn’t shady and greedy.
