Printer Fiasco Turned Victory

Recently I bought a printer. Exciting, I know. Front page news.
 But really, I was excited. It was an HP Officejet 4680 - an all-in-one.

It prints wirelessly, scans, copies, faxes, and walks the dog. Except maybe the walking the dog part. With my dad's coupons and some serious haggling, I bought the brand-new printer, ink refill, and a two year warranty for $36. Not bad, if I must say so myself.
Then I brought it home. It was supposed to be an easy set up, but for some reason my computer didn't like the software. It didn't even recognize the driver disk as software, and I had to look through the files on it to find a setup button. After struggling with it for a long time, and inviting over one of my computer friends, we got it mostly set up, and started to set up the wireless part (the part that sold me).
My printer printed out its own report card. The right column was full of "PASS"es, and one big, fat, ugly "FAIL". I had bought a faulty printer. The wireless didn't work. It even knew that it didn't work. Ugh. It could print with a USB cable, but what is the point of a wireless printer that can't print wirelessly?
A couple of days later I gave up and called HP's 1-800 number. And I know for a fact that the guy I was talking to was from India, or somewhere very like that. He was friendly, but we had....some difficulties communicating.
"Yes! A as in alpha!!!"
Anyway, after over a half an hour on the phone, he was convinced that my printer was not working. He told me that they could send me a new one and that I could mail my old one back to them, with prepaid shipping. I was fine with that. A minute later he changed his mind. "um, I thought of something better. What if we just emailed you a coupon for $139 to our website to buy a new printer?" I was like, "Yes!" And I would get to keep my old printer, which worked just fine besides the not wireless part. Sweet! "Okay. If you don't get the email within a couple of days, call this number, and enter this extension." Nice.
Well, it didn't come. Of course it couldn't be that easy.
And then "Jessica" (also Indian, from the sound of it) left a message on my phone for me to call her back.
Long story short, Jessica was from an entirely different branch and just needed my info for the records. Then someone else called me to make sure I was happy with the coupon - which still hadn't come. After more miscommunication,
"Yes! A as in alpha! T as in tom!!!!"
they got my name and email address right.
And now I have a shiney new printer, the HP Photosmart D110a.

With $139 I was able to buy ink and a warranty as well. What a relief to have that all over. Willie got the old printer, and the wireless (along with the nifty ePrint feature - I can email print jobs to my printer from anywhere) works on this one. Whew.
In the end I think I was just paid for the frustration, but I am happy with how it ended. Score on my part. I'm sure Willie isn't too disappointed either. :)