Great Printer + Great Customer Care

A great printer + great customer support = an awesome experience with my Kodak 5500 series All-In-One printer. It's a flatbed scanner, it's a dual-side photo copier, it takes a variety of memory cards, it's Mac and PC compatible, it prints beautiful pictures, in short, I love it! The best part about this printer is the inexpensive ink -- you'll pay easily half what you pay for other brands. I used to spend a lot of money on ink, but that was in the pre-Kodak era. Although this ink-sipping printer is the Prius of printers, its halo was tarnished this week when I suddenly found I could no longer print black. Scrolling through the menu on the printer, I did all the things one does before they break down and call customer support: cleaned the print head, deep cleaned the print head, calibrated the print head, even sacrificed a new black ink cartridge. Nothing worked. After a Google search, I found I was not alone. Other users had reported a similar problem with their own Kodak 5500 series printers. Fortunately for me, I was not among the first to encounter this issue, so I was able to easily follow the well-paved Internet trail blazed before me through forums, blog posts, and reviews.

If you have problem with your Kodak 5500 All-In-One printer, do what I did: call Kodak at (800) 421-6699. Listen through the recorded mumbo jumbo until you can dial extension 04 (that's the number zero and the number four). When you get a live agent, tell him or her that you are aware of known issues with the print head. It's refreshing to have a customer service agent, like the one I spoke with at Kodak, treat me like I wish I could always be treated. He listened to my problem, took down my information, and said a new print head was already in the mail. Not only that, but he threw in a couple extra print cartridges for my trouble. Now that's customer service! As a footnote, the Kodak agent recommended I clean the print head once per week (much more often than my usual practice) due to the print cartridges propensity to drying out. All in all, I highly recommend the Kodak for it's high print quality, and now, for its great customer support.