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- My rating: 0 stars
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8 out of 11 people found this review helpful
0.5 stars
"MY HELLISH NIGHTWARE"
Pros: Cheap. Cheap. Cheap.
Cons: ADF Doesn't Work. Unreliable. Customer service is truly worst in class. Tech support is clueless.
Summary: HERE IS MY HELLISH NIGHTMARE:
- Summer 2007, I purchased the Kodak 5500 AIO to use in my home office. I was only interested in units with and ADF because I actively use electronic filing for my records.
- It never worked as advertised. The ADF was a joke. Either didn?t work, scaned only one page out of a set, or reverse collated everything.
- ADF black and white scans were/are illegible. Grayscale are far too light.
- Printer doesn?t even initiate about 1/10 times I try to print. Has to be rebooted in order to begin printing agian.
- After 3 MONTHS of talking with tech support I was finally elevated to this ?super secret?, ?super high level? (their words not mine) email address that you are referred too only after you have wasted countless hours on the phone with tech support. This is what I wrote to that ?super secret?, ?super high level? email address which by the way is us-gcss-consumeradv@kodak.com (in case any of you out there need it).
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Dear Sir/Madam,
? The main problem is that the ADF has not worked for scanning more than one page since the first day I had the scanner hooked up. Having been a frequent adopter of new technology I knew that this was likely a software or firmware problem that would be discovered and corrected quickly by Kodak. I have regularly updated both the software and firmware on my unit hoping for a fix. In the meanwhile I have only been able to scan one page at a time through the ADF. Any more than that and the pages following the fIrst are all blank. A 15 page document will show as one page of text followed by 14 pages of blank sheets, etc.
My most recent firmware update was to the latest offered, as of Saturday. Unfortunately this still did not fix the problem, though it did add some functionality. Now the ADF does scan multiple sheets using only the "Picture" or "Grayscale Document" settings but then it mixes up the order of the pages in such a way that there is no rime or reason to
how they are arranged in the saved pdf file. This is clearly not adequate and does not qualify as a working ADF for scanning purposes. So I called tech support on two occasions over the weekend. Here is what has happened to me since:
Sat AM called tech support. Was told that there was no quick solution to my problem. I ended the call saying that basically I had obtained some slight level of ADF functionality since the new firmware update so that I would keep playing with it and call back.
While I was planning on calling Monday morning, I received the following email PRIOR to my being able to call.....
Greetings Mr. XXXXXX,
I am responding to your question regarding using the scanning feature in conjunction with the document feeder. Please be advised that you will only get a scan of the first page of your document if you use the document feeder. The document feeder is a feature that is meant to work with copying only. If you have more than one page to scan, you must lay them on the scanner glass one at a time.
Thank you for contacting Kodak. If you should have any further questions, please feel free to contact us at 1-800-235-6325. Your case number to reference is XXXXXXXXX. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Brenda
Kodak Assistance Team
Interestingly, Brenda claims that the 5500's ADF is NOT SUPPOSED TO WORK FOR scanning purposes!!!! This is in direct contradiction to the Kodak website and the packaging on my unit which states under the features block that it includes a... "35-page automatic document feeder makes copying, scanning, and faxing simple." Clearly what was advertised to be the case is not the case on my unit despite three months of patiently waiting for a fix... Now I am being told not only will it not be fixed but it was never supposed to work in the first place!
Monday AM, I called tech support. XXXX answered my call. I explained the situation and asked for a refund since I bought the product under fraudulent advertising. She was able to get Brenda on the phone on the other line but Brenda refused to allow XXXX to let her and I talk together! Brenda passed on a message through XXXX that my problems likely were related to my not having "enough RAM" stating that I only had "512 MB". The problem with this is statement is two fold..... FIRST her initial stance was that the product was not even supposed to operate while scanning and now all of the sudden it doesn't work because my RAM is too low!!! SECOND is that NO ONE to this point had EVER EVEN ASKED ME WHAT I WAS USING FOR RAM, etc. When I told XXXX that I had 2 GB on both of my machines, this was the first time the topic came up.
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CONCLUSION:
I RECEIVED A LETTER THE FOLLOWING DAY SAYING A PANEL WOULD REVIEW MY CASE AND GET BACK TO ME WITHIN A WEEK
THREE MONTHS LATER, HAVING HEARD NOTHING, I EMAILED AGAIN - NO REPLY
ONE WEEK LATER, I EMAILED AGAIN. THIS TIME I RECEIVED A CALL.
HILARIOUSLY THE CALLER SUGGESTED THAT THE BEST COURSE OF ACTION FOR ME TO TAKE AT ?THIS POINT? WOULD BE TO EMAIL MY PROBLEM TO THE ?SUPER SECRET?, ?SUPER HIGH LEVEL? TECH SUPPORT EMAIL us-gcss-consumeradv@kodak.com !!!!!!
BOTTOM LINE: NOW 6 MONTHS OLD, MY 5500 IS GOING OUT IN THIS WEEK'S TRASH. I WOULDN?T EVEN GIVE IT TO THE LOCAL SALVATION ARMY STORE TO SELL FOR $10.
- 1 reply to this review
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ADF does work!!! I was having the same issue but then I checked the AiO home center application (Mac OS X). Change the scan settings so it defaults to PDF. Now the auto document feeder will create multi page scans. Think about it, multi page jpegs don't make sense but multi page PDFs do make sense.
