Officejet Pro 8000 = Expensive mistake

Question

I'm not talking about the initial cost, but the running cost.
The supplied introductory cartridges ran out of ink in about six weeks after printing not many pages of mainly full colour documents. I replaced all four cartridges with new 940XLs at the beginning of January and since then have printed only mono documents, these mainly of text in draft mode. Since buying the printer (brand new, the wireless version), I have printed 278 b&w pages, 229 colour pages and 109 duplex - about 600 pages in total.
Now, one month after replacing the cartridges, I see that the ink supply levels are reading approx: Black 65%, Yellow 34%, Magenta 56%, Cyan 56%. 
I bought the replacement cartridges from Amazon for £54 (HP price would have been £81). 
As the Officejet Pro 8000 publicity shouts about "Professional colour for up to 50% less cost per page and energy use than Laser printers", I have several times contacted HP Customer Support about this and have been fobbed off with:
"I realize the importance of the issue and will make sure that I give you appropriate information. However, while printing all the ink cartridges are been used by the printer, even while printing in gray scale also. So if you want your printer to use only black ink cartridge, you can change thesettings to print in black only, but some amount of color ink would also be used. 
Please find the below steps in the link below to changethe color settings for the printer. 
 http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c01368574&cc=uk&lc=en&dlc=en&product=3737195"
And then:
" I understand your concern and I apologize for the inconvenience caused to you regarding this issue and appreciate your patience. But however, as the ink cartridges contains very minimum amount of ink in them, as they are only for the intialisation of the printer. And about the consumption of the color ink cartridges is because the printer uses all the ink cartridges when printing and as yellow is used every time when printing is done. so that is why the yellow consumption is more."
And then:
"As informed earlier about the introductry ink cartridges which came along with the printer would have consumed lot of ink because of the print settings, So I would request you to please change the print settings according to your needs from the link given to you in the previous mail. I am sure that after changing the print settings according to the printing what you are doing will give better page yields. Thank you."
All grammatical and spelling errors are theirs.
So you can see why buying this printer was an expensive mistake. Unlike my previous printer a Deskjet 1220C, it also takes an eternity to initialise itself and clicks, whirrs and rattles like a goods train while doing so. I've still got the Deskjet but sadly HP didn't see fit to update the driver to run under Snow Leopard on the Mac.
Disgruntled Astronomer

Answer 1

RE: ink cartridge runs out of ink ridiculously early. 
I use a 2+ year old HP Officejet J6480.   The ink cartridge I inserted on Jan 7, 2011 (I always write the date inserted on the cartridge box) ran out totally on Jan 20. And that's after I've continued to print way after the low ink notice. 
(I just signed myself on for a class action suit against HP for having the printer signal low or out of ink way before the ink is gone, so I keep printing until the ink is really gone.)
To answer some of the typical HP excuses for the early emptying of the ink cartridge:
1.  I always use the fast draft option
2.  I never use the "print in grayscale" option because I want to preserve the black ink for as long as possible.  In this way, color parts of the page won't use up the black ink, which I need more often than the color.
3.  The volume of printing for the above 2 week time period was about the same as always.  I use it at home, am retired, and don't print a whole lot of stuff.
 I've noticed other posts that complain of the same thing. HP ink cartridges are among the most expensive yet each year yield fewer and fewer pages.
I've also noticed that the moderator answers with a disclaimer about being an HP employee but his answer doesn't represent the opinion of HP. 
So where do I find where the buck will stop?  I would have preferred to e-mail or call HP to ask for a coupon for at least half off a new cartridge, but the company makes that impossible without paying a fee.  I've been buying HP printers since 1995 and bought my first HP computer 2 years ago.  The computer is ok but the support stinks.  I'm tired of having "Kevin" answer with an Indian accent and then research the answer to each question from a manual instead of knowing what I'm asking and having the knowledge to answer the question.
So, how do I get in touch with HP to ask for a coupon for a new ink cartridge to replace the one that ran out of ink in 2 weeks?