Canon Online Support Sucks

Another post in my series about incompetent or plain unfriendly companies. This time it's Canon.

I have a Selphy CP710 photo printer (cute, dinky little thing). You buy complete sets of ink + photo paper to use in it and the default printing size is 100x148mm postcard size. That works fine. You can also purchase other cool paper sizes such as 54x86mm credit card size stickers (KC-18IF). I ordered a pack online from www.123inkt.nl which is a perfectly good company, by the way. But then...

On receiving the paper, I couldn't get it to fit properly in the paper tray. There was no manual or information sheet provided with the photo paper either and the Selphy manual I had didn't mention anything about alternate paper-sizes needing any extra accessories. (Neither did the www.123inkt.nl site either, for that matter). After some Laurel and Hardy-type scratching of my head and frowning I finally worked out that I needed a smaller paper-cassette. But which one?!

I consider myself relatively gadget and internet savvy, but it took me ages to find out the item-number of the elusive paper-cassette (PCC-CP100). You'd think such information would be offered on the Canon website but - to my surprise and great disappointment - Canon does not offer PDF versions of their manuals on the site. In fact, they suggest you purchase manuals from a third-party!

If for any reason you find you no longer have your User Manual, software or driver you can purchase a replacement from our 3rd party provider, who are able to provide this service on our behalf.

How absurd! I wasted quite a few hours of my time on tracking down a damn paper cassette and blame Canon for that. If they simply added : "This product requires paper cassette PCC-CP100" to the packaging of the credit-card sized paper, people could save themselves a lot of time. And regarding the manuals: Canon, if you're reading: I love your products, but come on, why not offer downloadable manuals on your site, just like Sony does!

So, let me conclude this frustrated rant with the information that others might also be looking for:

• Canon Selphy Printer CP-710 comes with a postcard size paper cassette. This works fine for 100 x 148mm / 4x6 in paper sizes.
• For credit-card sized paper (54x86mm) KC-18IL and KC-18IF, you''l need the paper cassette PCC-CP100.
• Canon also offers Panorama and L-sized paper. I haven't bought that, so don't know if that requires yet another paper cassette as well.

Good luck!