Call to Arms for the dreaded U052 Wrong Printhead Error

[macnicol]

This is a "call to arms" for all of you Canon customers who have had this problem and have had their printers disabled because of it.  Please respond with the model of your printer and if you were able to fix it, what you did to fix it. 

We need to put pressure on Canon to respond this product defect.  It appears to be bad firmware that does not allow the user to override the problem and to continue to use the printer even in a degraded mode.  From my investigations the problem is NOT a printhead issue - no way one can be printing fine and then have this error alert without having changed the printhead or ink cartridges!

Canon, PLEASE take this issue seriously and provide a solution across the affected models.  If nothing else there should be a trade-in allowance for those printers that have been affected by this product defect.

I have had many Canon printers because they have superior functional specifications. I want to be able to continue using Canon products but only if I can have confidence that this product defect will not destroy my investment.

If Canon is unresponsive our next step should be to aggressively publisize this product defect on social media and on major product vendor outlet sites as negatives reviews.

Forum Users, please reply with your affected model number(s) and with details of any succdessful fix procedure.

[redslider]

mx882.  its now Aug 2016 and still nothing has changed, but we continue to experience the problem. Mine started last week on a 3yr old machine.  I got here, because of having the U052 problem. I see Cannon still refuses to acknowledge or fix the problem.  What else is there to say except it's my last Canon product and the last any of my friends will ever get after I give them my no-buy Canon products recommendation.  Simple as that. Nothing else to do.

[mpinchbeck]

So I've contacted Canon Customer Service to express my concern along with everyone else posting in this (currently 125 page) Blog about our U052 print head is incorrectly installed error.  I knew when I called I wasn't going to get any genuine concern for our plight.  Cannon is still using the same base print head technology currently in 2016 with the MG7520 and others still getting this error as well.

Pages upon pages on a Google search for “Canon U052”, wow!

Canon simply doesn’t care.

The conclusion I've come to is that the only way Canon will listen, is for everyone reading this to vote with their dollars.  Don't buy Canon!  There are other better printers on the market that hold up a lot better.

Only when Canon's Home Consumer Printers' sales fall will Canon take the concerns of their past customers who trusted the name on the product they were buying, to heart.

If 125 pages of registered Canon consumers posting their grievances can't get the attention of the Canon Executives, then maybe a drop in sales will.

So, the next time you find yourself discussing with family, friends and the occasional stranger at Best Buy which printer to get, steer them away from Canon inkjet printers.

[redslider]

I doubt Canon cares. They've already written us off as a 'cost of doing business' and I'm sure have tacked on anything lost in the class action suit or lost business into the prices of their new machines.  To them, it's a loss/profit calculation. Ethical or social responsibility have nothing to do with it. So yes, we should make sure people know about this swindle before they buy a new printer, rather than after it breaks down. But don't expect it to change much. It won't.

[JohnWPB]

"So, the next time you find yourself discussing with family, friends and the occasional stranger at Best Buy which printer to get, steer them away from Canon inkjet printers."

I do this all the time!  Just this past weekend I convinced 2 people looking at Canon printers at Best Buy to purchase another brand,  after explaining the problem to them.  One thought I was crazy, till I told him to simply Google search U052 on his phone.  Vengence was instant!  This forum, and TONS of other links and videos convinced him on the spot.  He was looking at the Epson printers when I left 🙂 🙂 🙂

[mj74]

Got this error today on a MG5305S. Printer is around 3 years old. Tried removing and cleaning the printhead and leaving the printer unplugged for 10 minutes before powering up but nothing will clear it.

Has a fix been found yet or is it a case of buying a new printer?

[shaval123]

The only fix is to put the printer in the trash and buy a new printer with a different brand!

[petethepen]

Guys - just to be fair to newbies on this site, you can look around and find suppliers of new print heads for $40 - $60.  I do understand everyone's frustration about the way Canon has dealt with this problem, but let's not advise people to throw away relatively new printers when a less expensive fix is available.

[Balalayker]

petethepen, this is wrong.

My Pixma MP970 ridiculously doesn't work even as a scanner - because of the printhead error.

Its QY6-0062-010 printhead isn't produced by Canon anymore.

Albeit the fact that the printer is technically modern and advanced enough.

In the Internet you cannot find this printhead for a price less than 200 $.

This is inacceptable given that you don't even know for how long it is going to work.

The only response I've received from Canon Support was a refusal to repair my printer and a proposition to find on my own a place where it can be repaired.

[KBeck]

New print heads don't help. There's plenty of comments in the thread where people bought new print heads, put them in, and it either didn't work or failed again, same error code, shortly thereafter.
I have long been convinced that this is a Canon software induced fault, put in there by Canon marketing, to remotely brick Canon printers in the hopes of getting the unwary to buy a new Canon printer. The problems showed up on my printer a couple of days after a "software update". At this point my suspicions are that an operative at Canon remotely disables batches of "older" printers whenever printer sales gets too low.
Fraud, yeah. The class action lawsuit went into discovery and immediately settled, with the class lawyers bribed to go away. Thank you, U.S. "Justice" system. When is the FTC going to take notice?
KBeck

[petethepen]

For those of you who don't want to go down the rabbit hole of ultra-paranoia, I bought a new printhead for my MG8150 some 4 months ago after getting the same U052 Wrong Printhead Error message, and the new printhead has worked perfectly ever since.  My only point here is that positive action is better than simply moaning.