I recently changed my card and figured I would let the subscription expire.
Fast forward to today. I go to print something and find that the printer is "unable to print" even though there is ample ink left in the cartridges. I press a button on the printer and it spits out a report that states the printer is unable to print, except for printer reports (!).
I dig a little (since the error message they show provides no additional information beyond not being able to print) and find this thread [0] in their support forum. It turns out that once the subscription is cancelled or suspended, you are no longer able to use the ink that has been sent to you. Some even report not being able to print with cartridges they bought independently.
It turns out that their terms state that you're buying the ability to print x pages and the ink is actually always owned by HP, even when in your possession.
This has to be one shadiest and just overall worst product experiences I've come across in a while.
Printers have always been a bit of a pain but since when did they have to be near permanently connected to the internet else threaten to cut you off from all of their capabilities.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20230522114823/https://h30434.ww...
I do agree that it is a bit wasteful but unfortunately it isn't economical for them to retrieve the partially-used cartridges from cancelled subscriptions, so it is just thrown away. It would be interesting if they offered a "buy out" option. When you cancel the subscription with half an ink cartridge they could sell it to you for half of the price.
If they allowed use of cartridges after the subscription expiry then the system could easily be abused by only subscribing for one month at a time to refill your cartridge then cancelling until you actually used it up. There are workarounds for this like minimum subscription length or blocking people based on address but they have other problems.
The real shady shit is rejecting third-party cartridges, that should be illegal. It's your printer and you should be able to decide what ink you use.
these days each bottle would have a "smart cap" that could remotely curdle your milk in case of non-payment. it's not (historically) normal, it's not fair, but it's recently normalized because tech has enabled new ways for corporations to squeeze their customers.
Well, it curdles on its own. They will come after you for the milk crate they delivered things in.
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2016/10/03/florida-man-arrested...
https://www.milkcratesdirect.com/blog/everything-you-need-to...
>Milk crates are one of the most versatile products around and can be used for everything from storage to fishing, furniture or even gardening. And the best bit of all is that you can simply pick them up for free from outside stores, right?
>Wrong
has articles about using milk crates for gardening, seating, in classrooms, and on bicycles in the sidebar.
For example:
10 Great Uses of Milk Crates You’ve Probably Never Thought Of!
https://www.milkcratesdirect.com/blog/10-great-uses-of-milk-...
No, because they charged you $1 for every bottle they delivered. You bought the entire bottle upfront (you may have paid in arrears, but when it was delivered you agreed to pay)
Imagine instead the milkman drops 10 bottles on your doorstep. Some days you only want 1 bottle for tea and a bit of cereal, but other days you make some pancakes and need 6 bottles. At the end of the day the milkman takes back the unused milk and charges you for what you used.
Aside from the problem of milk spoiling that seems a perfectly reasonable model.
I can borrow as much as I can read from the library, but I can't keep the books I haven't read at home while I am not a member. The books never really belong to me, just as the HP ink never really belong to users (until they are printed onto paper, at which point they become a constituent part of a "page" which _is_ owned by the user).
I think the cognitive dissonance arises because this "borrowing" model is being applied to a _consumable product_, which is not common.
Within a membership limit, HP can send you 1 cartridge of 5 at a time. The number of cartridges are not pre-determined when you start paying
You can argue that the HP Instant Ink program itself is a scummy project, but these particular terms are understandable.
I mean just look at the pricing of the program, $6 a month for 100 pages. VS $30+ for an ink cartridge.
This isn't some "subscribe and save" program where they are sending you ink at a reduced cost but you can do with it as you wish. It's buying pages, it's made very clear what you are actually buying and the ink is basically leased to you.
Now if they bricked the printer (like iRobot does with iRobot Select) I would be far more sympathetic and would be upset, but otherwise someone could just subscribe for a month. Pay the $1 and get a full ink cartridge, which simply doesn't make sense from HP's prospective.
I also don't understand what your cost argument is supposed to say: if you actually print at close to the allowed limit you're basically getting a new cartridge every other month or so, which is still not profitable if the $30 price is close to the break even price. If the problem for HP really was worry about not getting the money back for the initial cartridge they could just demand you commit for a six month period at least.
I don't know where you are getting your numbers from. If I to look at the HP Tango, and I look at the "High Yield" cartridge which is $46, that is rated at 600 pages.
So no, if you are doing 100 pages I would not expect you would be buying a new tank every month. Which is the $6 one I mentioned.
If they demanded that commitment we would just be complaining about the commitment and not this side of it... Also that doesn't account for when they do inevitably need to send you another cartridge.
The point here is simple, the marketing for "Instant Ink" is very clear about never stating how often you are getting a cartridge. It is just when you need it. They do that, because you are not buying the physical cartridge but obviously you need ink in your home to be able to print. If I subscribe to this for 3 months, spend the $18 a month. I may get that first cartridge but if O do zero prints, I won't be sent another cartridge (or at least shouldn't be).
Yes it is a bit weird to think that you have something in your hands that you cannot actually use. But you are not buying the actual cartridges in this model.
Put another way, let's assume this cartridge is actually 600 pages (it may or may not be since it depends on what exactly you print, unlike this subscription service that is just a per page). So you subscribe to this service saying you will print 50 pages a month. Theoretically that single cartridge you were sent at the beginning of your subscription will last for a year. You're paying $4 a month. HP is making the bet that you will keep up the subscription even though that first month is most likely a loss for them.
If they were to just be "nice" and allow you to keep the cartridge it just opens it up for abuse.
I mean, I pay $30 for 2 generic laser toner cartridges that last upwards of a year at my home (and my kids are prolific users of the Canon laser printer).
$6/mo is usurious just like $30 cartridges.
HP has gotten greedy and instead of making this transition to a subscription model easy they're getting well deserved backlash.
Aside from that, they cover shipping and recycling of old cartridges, and they include color/photo printing in that prices (not sure if you that's relevant for toner though? not a printer expert.)
$2/mo for 50 pages is a pretty great deal, as someone who seldom prints.
That allegation was essentially made: "Some even report not being able to print with cartridges they bought independently."
If they couldn’t turn off cartridges when subscriptions stop, they’d have to send less-filled cartridges. Otherwise, there’d be huge incentive to sign up for one month, get your big cartridge, and cancel.
It looks like HP handles recycling old cartridges. It might be better than the alternative -- people buying ink and disposing of the cartridge in a landfill, rather than the cartridge being re-used.
Shipping boxes of heavy books costs a lot of money, and the publisher doesn't actually need the books back (because they can always print new copies very cheaply).
So the publisher just tells the book store to destroy the books, and as evidence for their destruction asks only for the covers to be shipped back to them (which is cheap).
This is why books contain within them the text "This book should not be sold without a cover".
So with this printer company, they are effectively "destroying" the unused ink cartridge since it's not worth it economically to have it shipped back to them.
The added bonus is that if the customer renews the subscription then the ink can be "undestroyed"!
As a person who only uses original cartridges (w/o subscription, I buy and use them until they finish), I completely agree. However, ink chemistry is not some straightforward mixing and the risks are largely downplayed by 3rd party ink manufacturers.
This is even before going into ink pH, pigment vs. dyes, and print longevity discussions.
Exactly and precisely 0.0% of printer manufacturers make their own ink.
Almost all printer ink in the world comes from a very small region, a single business park really, of Malaysia. Some is also made in Europe and Japan.
It is made by companies like Toyo Chem, DIC, Sakata, and Swan and transported directly to the facilities that fill the cartridges.
Printer companies have almost no input into the process, they buy based on spec from a list of offerings.
3rd party cartridge manufacturers buy the same ink, with the same specs, from the same manufacturers as printer manufacturers.
If a printer manufacturer claims to have an exclusive formula they are either lying, or the ink maker lied about giving them exclusivity because you can buy any ink from anyone at anytime. If the manufacturer wants to keep up appearances they'll change a single digit on the product ID and claim it is a different product, they don't care where the drums are going so long as the wire transfer goes through.
Even the ink manufacturers OFTEN don't "create" ink. They just blend pigments from pigment manufacturers together with solvents from solvent manufacturers in formulae that are pre-determined between the pigment and solvent makers.
If a customers says "I need an ink that does x" they go to the pigment and solvent suppliers and ask "what do I need to buy so the ink does x" and the suppliers tell them and the ink manufacturer follows the formula to the letter.
I am not involved in ink development myself, but I know that when we get a new ink from the other side of the ocean (with improved properties, or compying with updated regulations), many printing parameters have to be changed or new print mode algorithms have to be developed to maintain print quality. When it's just not possible, there may be hardware changes, or there is some more alchemy, and we get a new version of the ink. And so on. This can literally take years, and sometimes it just doesn't work and a new ink development path is abandoned
The biggest problem with inkjet is clogged nozzles from dried ink. The best solution is to flow through a bit of ink every now and again when the printer would otherwise be idle. The business model of expensive, vendor-locked ink maximally leverages this reality against the customer's interests to the detriment of print quality and nozzle longevity. So no, vendors don't use DRM to maximize longevity. Quite the opposite. Lol.
My almost a decade old HP Deskjet 4515 Ink advantage is extremely resilient against cartridge clogs. In standard mode, its printing pattern tolerates clogged lines so well, so that you can't see any print quality degradation unless you get a "print quality report".
Moreover, a couple of cleaning runs unclogs all the nozzles 99% of the time, even after 6 months of hiatus.
I never replaced a cartridge because of a clog since I bought that thing. It also routinely underestimates cartridge life. Currently it claims the black cartridge is empty, but it's printing with the quality of a new cartridge.
None of my HP Printers (4515, 5150, 500C and another entry level AIO) never let me down in the cartridge department, even after long idle periods. That entry level AIO just worn out internally, I gave others away because I was upgrading. 4515 is my current workhorse.
The only printer which had cartridge clogging problems was my Canon BJC4300. That thing made me decide to buy nothing but HP only.
I'd be willing to accept that for systems where the ink cartridges and printheads are separate and third-party ink not up to spec can actually cause serious damage (e.g. clogged ink pipes, replacing or flushing these is a serious amount of work), but HP's consumer printers are almost exclusively made with combined inkhead/cartridges.
My decades old prints done with an HP500C are still intact and looking nice-ish and definitely legible. I don't want to get an old printed document a couple of years old and see it faded away.
Same for photos. I print photos for people and some of them are still looking almost new after 5-6 years, despite being printed with a mid-end "Ink Advantage" printer with dye inks.
For high volume, ephemeral prints, a 3d party ink can be OK, but these are my concerns, and I'm not willing to take the risks personally. Failing print heads and flooded printers are also not in my wish list, thanks.
A simple printer like an old 500C can be cleaned easily, but a more compact AIO with a duplexer cannot be cleaned after such event.
While tangential, I remember seeing HP's own, official black cartridge refill kits when 500C and 550C were new. I didn't see them after.
[0]: https://www.brother-usa.com/supplies/subscription-info/refre...
Reposting What I wrote during COVID [1]
I had to install a new inkjet printer because kids now need to print out their homework during COVID.
I swear to god if I ever become wealthy the printer industry is what I intended to completely destroy. Not in it for profit. Not positive sum whatever startup thinking. It will be Zero Sum.
Edit: Lasers are fine. That will be left alone.
I think for £275 with toner is worth it. Its pricier up front than the inkjets but the ease of use and reliability are totally worth it for me.
1. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Brother-HL-L8260CDW-Wireless-Connec...
It's worth the cost though. I bought a behemoth Brother printer/scanner laser printer years ago and it's been completely reliable (apart from occasionally disappearing from the network and needing a reboot). I don't have to worry about mainly printing black as the colour toner can hardly dry out and is always ready for use whereas I'm constantly hearing of occasional users of inkjets needing to buy fresh cartridges after just a couple of months of them not being used.
Totally worth it though. I bought a Brother color laser over 10 years ago and it has been flawless. A lifesaver during covid and printing homework at home.
Before that I was going through cheap inkjets which each only lasted a year or less before becoming clogged and unusable. While cheap at around ~$100/ea, it was more expensive over the years than simply buying a color laser once and stop the frustration and waste.
Though, if you don't have ample floor space... it's the size of our washer I think, what with the extra trays and whatnot.
I've used colour laser printers at home for quite some time. An older Xerox (6125?) for some years which I later replaced by a 6510 (built-in duplex, faster) when that started to exhibit problems. They cost a lot more than for cheap home inkjets when looking at the initial outlay (£150+ compared to £30+) but once you consider the cost of ink (even just black) including the fact that if you don't print regularly you waste a pile on head cleaning as they gum up, after a cartridge or few you hit break even.¹
Or you used to. Manufactures seem to have got wise to the fact people were starting to get wise to this: the price of official consumables has gone up, and they've cracked down on 3rd party toner carts much like the inkjet world. Running the models that have replaced the 6510 would cost considerably more per page² even if using official cartridges for the 6510. I found this out when looking for a laser to replace my Dad's inkjet that had just died. Looking at second hand units of models that are still dirt cheap to run, they are selling for silly prices – presumably people & small businesses that print high volume are collecting them while they can.
I will be taking very good care of my current printer to try make it survive as long as possible…
> I know it is wishful thinking but I do hope someday we could have some innovation with Colour Laser.
Unfortunately the only innovation seems to be in techniques for gouging money out of customers, inspired by methods that have worked in the inkjet market. When you achieve world domination you may have to cast the laser printer market into the same volcano as the inkjets and completely start afresh.
----
[1] Also, the output quality is far better unless you use more expensive paper (I get crisper black text out of my laser on cheap stock paper than inkjets get on more expensive stuff designed to minimise ink bleed and such). Photo output on plain paper is better too, though ink wins significantly once you buy speciality paper – though for the few pages of that sort of printing I've needed in recent years I've just had done at the printing booth in the local supermarket and that further beats home inkjet output and isn't particularly expensive for small one-off tasks.
[2] noticeably more than 10x, as high as 25x comparing 3rd party supplies which the new models make harder to use.
I replaced it a few years ago with a more recent HL model that is almost identical, but has wifi. Really happy with the quality and reliability of both printers so far.
The starter cartridge that came with my laser printer said it was empty after 500 pages. I found a way to reset the chip from the printer and am still printing with the same cartridge a year later.
That said, it now works with Linux on WiFi and has not given me any other issues.
Brother makes reliable printers for offices. A consumer might want to print until the ink gets faded and streaky (to maximize lifespan), but for an office setting reliability is more important. You'd rather replace toner more often and have the prints always look great, than have to QC every sheet to determine if it's time to change the cartridge. Given the variable amount of ink on each printed page, Brother knows that a toner cart should last X pages 95% of the time (or whatever it is).
I love the "10 years ago" testimonials and those are helpful, but I'm worried that quality/philosophy of Brother might have dropped in the intermittent time. Or are the same models still available new? That would be neat.
The more abused ones (plenty of dust from gravel lots and probably takes a meter tumble every 6-12 months (not that we'd be told about it)) last 2-3ish years before something get finicky enough on them that replacing them makes sense. The ones in the more cared for areas haven't had an issue and have only been replaced because site managerials want a newer printer when the mistreated printers are 5-6 years newer than theirs (but no actual issue with the printer).
I can say that quality hasn't changed noticeably from what I have seen in this narrow band of their products and that these machnies have done well and lasted longer than other ocassional cheap printer we've put in for whatever reason. I'd extrapolate from that to say ten years in a home office printing a few pages a week should be easy for them (Though maybe there's a part that gives up the ghost after 7 years that I don't see pop up in our use case).
Can't comment on linux support.
Earlier this month I upgraded to a full duplex color laser printer. (HL-3270CDW) Not because my existing printer is broken or has stopped working, but I was printing sections from a book and it annoyed me that I had to do all the flipping manually and gosh it would be nice if it were in color. Kind of an impulse buy.
It's the same. Everything is the same. It's got new tech in it; it's got newfangled stuff like wifi, bluetooth, and NFC. (my old one had nothing but a USB port; they had versions with ethernet and wifi but I got the cheapest one) But it looks the same, it feels the same, it sounds the same, the drivers are in one of my distro's package manager's overlays and just work. (Gentoo/brother-overlay)
I haven't owned it long enough to need to replace the toner. Amazon has generic versions of the toner for 30% of what Brother is charging. I don't know whether it will last forever with no issues, but my magic 8-ball says "all signs point to yes."
My old printer is the HL-2240. It's discontinued. It looks like the new model in that line is the HL-L2320D. Besides the fact that they've discontinued the half-duplex printers, (D is for full duplex, W is for wireless, C is for color) it looks like it's basically the same exact thing; they're putting precisely zero effort into "updating" the styling which I like. The toner cartridges for the 2240 and 2320 are not compatible, but Brother is still selling toner in the 2240 cartridges, despite the fact that they're not selling any printers that use them.
https://www.brother-usa.com/products/hl2240
I guess HP think they have a monopoly somehow for them engage in stuff like this? Except they don't.
Brother saw the money on the table and have decided to move towards the dark side.
OP is in possesion of the physical product that his subscription PAID FOR. They can say the sub is for "pages printed", but that's complete nonsense and everyone knows it. It's the INK OP is paying for. They have paid for that ink. They own that ink. They should be able to use it.
Attaching a subscription to a physical product, and then disabling the use of that physical product, is complete nonsense. The phone contract analogy is a poor one. You are paying off the cost of the phone with the contract. They don't send you a new phone each month, and then stop you using it because you didn't use all your minutes.
Normalisation of stuff like this is alarming. Consumers are done for really, I despair as to where it is all going. Especially when you have a usually informed HN audience sticking up for it.
I actually don't think that's nonsense, because HP is charging per page, not per ink cartridge. You don't get a new ink cartridge every month, you get the ability to print more pages, and only new cartridges as required to print those pages. Put another way, OP's subscription only paid for a fraction of their ink cartridge, not the whole cartridge.
HP could make OP mail back their half-empty cartridge, but that likely would raise the overall cost of the service due to shipping logistics.
I agree the whole concept of this service feels scummy and I would never recommend it to anyone, I just don't find this particular aspect so unfair.
She's retired but she does a lot of arts and crafts stuff and seems to print a fair amount most months, and she hates having to drive somewhere to buy ink when you run out, so I guess this is more convenient.
But that's literally how it works! A certain number of pages are included in the monthly cost, and you're billed for additional pages over the limit.
The problem is that OP cancelled their subscription shortly after receiving a new cartridge. So now the options are:
• Make OP return the cartridge.
• Charge OP for the remainder of their cartridge as a cancellation fee. (Yuck!)
• Prevent OP from using the cartridge.
---
> The fact that ink must be bundled in cartridges that print many pages is HPs problem, not consumers, and they can't work around that with a non-sensical subscription model.
But at the same time: consumers are choosing to buy this subscription. HP provides an option to buy cartridges outright, without limits, and consumers are choosing the subscription instead.
I don't know why consumers are doing that. I would never do it, and I would strongly advise others against it. But many people appear to appreciate the service.
Now, maybe those people are being tricked into the subscription via dark patterns, which would be a problem, but a different one.
https://www.hp.com/us-en/printers/instant-ink/plans.html
You are paying $6 for 100 pages. Then you can add 10 pages for $1 (that amount changes based on the subscription).
We can argue that the program has some scummy aspects but if we are going to argue about this we should at least look up how it actually works here.
When we use “Windows” we don’t complain that they’re not real windows. When we use a Mac, we don’t complain that it’s not real Macintosh apples. It’s just a name.
As the parent commenter says, you pay explicitly for a quota of printed pages, not ink or anything else. Therefore, they do define a price per page, anywhere from 10c on their cheapest plan down to 3.57c on their most expensive.
Is it a shitty practice? Certainly. But you explicitly dont pay for ink, regardless of the name of the product.
Its super easy to be on a "heavy" plan, get 10 ink cartridges, then cancel the first month and use that ink for a year. This causes HP to lose profits. They are betting that people don't really print as much as they think they do, most people are overpaying for their plan, and a small amount are actually using it up.
Imagine if Netflix would let you KEEP your downloaded content after you stopped paying. Customers would pay for a month, download everything, cancel, then watch stuff throughout the year
HP essentially created an optional netflix-style ink cartridge plan. As long as you pay you get unlimited cartridges. The second you stop paying you lose it all. No one is forcing you to opt in, but I know a lot of people who like the style even if they understand they're overpaying
or you could print 10 pages with a single sentence in them
HP sends you new cartridges depending on your use. So the second person in my example would not get a new cartridge, while the first would get 3 in the mail the next day. Both are paying the same monthly payment.
Its a dumb idea, but some people opt-in to it. And from my personal experience people end up with lots of extras being shipped to them. They can have 5-6 full cartridges at home at a time, for future use. HP doesn't want you to get stuck without ink, so they overstock you. Cancelling can cause people to take advantage of that overstock
It might not even cover shipping costs for the ink, you pay $0.99 and receive a full set of fully filled cartridges, that may last you a few years on a $0.99 subscription.
Are you really willing to subscribe to a baseline 100USD/month subscription for ink?
If you sign up for a cost per print plan, you get some benefits in consideration for your payment. If you drop it, those benefits end. It’s no different than renting a car and expecting to keep driving after it ends.
I use HP Instant Ink because my kids want to print color. Otherwise, I have a brother that I purchased like 15 years ago! The cost is cheaper at the volume we print, and you don’t get in a position where your marginal cost goes up by $75 or whatever the cartridge sells for. I think we pay about $60/year.
My sister-in-law is a photographer and prints alot. She has the fancy Epson tank printer, which makes sense for her as she prints easily 2,000 prints a year.
This is more like paying for an aftermarket maintenance plan and then expecting to drive your car (that you bought) after it ends - like no fucking shit you should expect to keep using your car after that maintenance plan expires. When they expire they don't siphon out your gas, oil, windshield washer fluid, engine coolant, brake fluid, and automatic transmission fluid!
It's pretty on-brand for the HN audience I feel. For several years HN has felt like the epitome of the temporarily embarassed millionare meme. The site often supports corporations taking what they can for users, and the only reason I can see for people to feel so strongly about it is they either are or imagine themselves in the future to be stakeholders in companies that make their money from exploiting consumers.
I wouldn’t use this plan because I don’t print enough to make it worth it, but that doesn’t mean they are evil for offering the option.
If it’s hidden in the UI that’s bad. OP sounds a lot more surprised than he should be.
Not really, they have a choice of plans, all based on how many pages you want.
The cartridges are pretty big. Most people will get one only every few months or so, as they need them.
Added: I, for one, am pleased that HP has sent me hundreds of dollars worth of consumables (paper and ink) and lets me then pay for it over time, at a discounted rate and no interest.
Probably wouldn’t take long to get banned from like every retailer though.
I wouldn’t really endorse this but HP stiffed me on $500 when they canceled an order I placed with an HP gift card. It just, disappeared. Their customer support never even understood the problem, they just sent different and wrong form replies to everything. It had been too long to charge it back but at this point they’ve earned every bit of hate they’ve ever got in my mind.
No, they are paying for pages printed. Which may be a dumb model for consumers (its common for business) but its the model they explicitly signed up for.
That's not to say that I know they won't ever do those things, or that they have no plans to, but they at least right now seem to not be pulling this same kind of anti-consumer crap so far.
I've got a wee Brother laser B&W printer for 98% of my printing needs, and the email address for a local printshop who can slightly overcharge me whenever I need a photo (etc) printing.
Yes. I was traveling and staying in a house that had no printer. To print I would load PDFs onto a flash drive and drive to FedEx Office. It didn't cost much but it was quite a hassle.
In my own house a printer is a must have item.
I've bought several inkjet (hp, canon, epson) and even tried to refill the cartridge with a syringe only to discover that some inkjet printers are made to fail after a few hundreds page.
I have the brother 9330 laser color since 2014 and it never failed.
Printed 13k page and lost only 7 pages to jamming.
I'm currently happy with our Epson EcoTank ET-5150. Ink prices are reasonable (no cartridges). There are subscriptions available for Epsons as well, and you can pay per page, but it's not required. Just click no.
It's a deviously smart trick, because people who let their subscriptions lapse probably really need to get something printed right when they find out about this restriction. You then have a choice between running to the mall and buying a new ink cartridge (or more realistically, a full printer, because those are cheaper) or paying for another year of ink subscriptions and continuing the print right away.
Friends don't let friends buy HP consumer printers. If you can get your hand on a second hand laser printer you'll probably be happy for years, but their inkjets are manufactured e-waste.
Inkjets are great for photos and people who print a few pages a week, but are absolutely the worst for people who rarely print anything.
Leave an inkjet alone for months and you can end up with permanently clogged print heads.
To resolve this you are meant to buy another printer. Or you can pull the whole thing to bits and try to replace the pad, then find some way to hack the firmware to reset the counter.
They verify ink bottles by requiring you to enter CD-key like number which is printed on a bottle. However, ink is cheap and you don't have to buy 3rd party one.
A while ago, pre-subscription era, I bought their cheapest inkjet printer in a store because I needed to print/sign/scan a bunch of documents.
I fully expected to hate it... and to my surprise it is actually decent. I have it for seven years now and unlike all other inkjet printers I used in the past, its ink does not run dry. It never let me down when I needed to print something in a hurry.
I still own my own laser printer because the convenience of not having to leave when I want to print is worth it, but I'm not pretending this is something worth doing.
Maybe if you don't value your time, or have perfect foresight/planning (eg. it's 10pm and you needed something printed for 9am tomorrow). The cheapest plan is $0.99/month, or $12/year. That seems like a pretty good deal to avoid having to do a 30 minute errand every time you need something printed.
HP OfficeJet Pro 9025e vs HP OfficeJet Pro 9025
OR
HP LaserJet Pro M234sdwe vs HP LaserJet Pro M234sdw
The "e" printers support subscription based ink and require an internet connection otherwise they won't print.
- It says it all over the outside of the box
- It says it in the box on multiple sheets of paper in big text
- It says it when you are installing the driver
- It says it when you are purchasing the subscription
The cost of the printer is subsidized to some extent (similar to carrier locked phones) and they are subscription based printers.
I don't understand how HP is at fault here. Subscriptions are a shitty business model, but nobody forced you to buy a subscription based printer. If you didn't want that, then you should not have bought the "e" model, you made that decision yourself, ignoring all the warnings outside and inside the box, regretted it later, then blamed HP.
It's not that obvious at all, actually even under their question section they state the subscription is not required:
- Does an HP+ Printer require a subscription to the Instant Ink service or rother ongoing costs?
"No, there are no additional costs associated with HP+. You can choose to enroll in an optional subscription for Instant Ink and receive 6 months subscription, but it is not required."
If you paid money for a cartridge that doesn't work without a subscription, you got scammed by the seller, not by HP.
Instant Ink is an optional subscription, which they plainly state, and that costs money.
It is marked as HP+ eligible. It states that HP+ is chosen or not at setup (https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71OZXjots2S._AC_SX679_.j...)
In the requirements it says: "The optional cloud - connected HP+ printing system requires an HP account, ongoing internet connection, and use of Original HP Ink Cartridges for the life of the printer."
etc
I don't buy inkjets anyway because they aren't worth it over color laser printers, but i will say trying to understand any of this seems hard at a glance.
Like, fundamentally an economic model should incentivize the creation of value; I buy a widget from you for $N, you get $N, and I get to own something that is worth $N; if HP is actively sabotaging existing printers/cartridges, it just feels like it's subtracting value.
Cancellations and plan downgrades are effective after the last day of the current billing cycle.
I would argue that if that is indeed what you actually agreed to, yes, the publisher should be allowed to do that.
The obvious solution is - don't accept stupid fucking contracts with terms you don't actually agree to!
This would be easier to understand if you had to return the cartridge after cancellation, but they probably figured it's cheaper to let you throw it away.
Mother-in-law needed one too last Christmas, and we ended up getting her a Brother as well, even if the cost was a bit higher than the HP equivalent, purely because of their practices.
Vote with your wallet.
HP explicitly offers a subscription model of printing in which you can pay by the page. But cue the outrage about (surprise!) why that can't be subverted.
I don't know who still makes decent printers today -- I see a lot of people recommend Brother -- but why buy new when there are tons of cheap old laser printers from the days before they all became anti-consumer garbage?
For the audience, the key is using the Vista USB drivers from the site. Good thru 10 and I assume 11.
> It's plug and play on Linux,
Did not know that. Which distro? I have an Arch install that might benefit (from that slow, reliable 1010/1012 slog).
Pretty cool that we've let ourselves be led into a world where there's a rising private tax on use of "the printing press" and accept the choices that enable monopolizing control in the first place. Buyer's boycotts promote accepting the parameters but rejecting this one bad thing that just happens to be a product of those parameters and leave people exhausted from uninspiring campaigning with questionable impact. Like voting blue (or red whichever you want) harder to try to fix this kind of problem.
Speaking practically on topic, I haven't seen any Wirecutter-level consumer awareness campaigns in tech lead to material lasting change against corporate interests. The state of most Wirecutter type coverage of product categories seems to be generally worsening and getting more expensive rather than resulting in consumer-friendly change from market pushback. What you advocate for is essentially a Wirecutter movement and is as radical as Wirecutter is which we can see the underwhelming results of already.
1. You are not OK with Shell dumping so much oil in the sea, so you stop buying Shell. But your action doesn't have any effect: you stop buying shell, oil still in the oceans. Boycott isn't the best path, unless it's really massive.
2. You are not OK with HP printer practices, but you don't necesarily want HP to go bankrupt or to pass a law banning HP practices. You just don't buy HP printers and you live happy afterwards. What other people does is not your problem. Boycott works.
You can say that HP selling ink subscription doesn't have any externalities, so every individual that buys one of such subscriptions is to blame and they don't shift costs to other people. You have options that keeps you safe from HP practices. Ask any Mac or Linux user how do they feel about Microsoft pushing trackers and ads on their OS: at best they don't care, but probably they laught at it.
AFAIK, the only reason to go inkjet is if you're regularly printing photos, as inkjets typically produce better photos than laser.
I probably print 20 pages per year. I bought a Brother monochrome laser printer because I want the convenience of printing from home but got tired of my inkjet cartridges clogging and drying up.
Most people just print a few pages every few weeks, and I'm arguing that those are also good use cases for laser. The upfront cost of laser is pretty low these days. You can often get a color all-in-one laser, with duplexer, for under $200.
The sweet spot for ink is somewhere in the middle. Printing regularly, but not high volume.
I have not looked at how easy it would be to clean out, reuse and reset the box but I suspect it is possible.
you're paying for X pages a month, and the ink is supplied to you to allow you to do that
would it be any different if you were in the local staples paying for X pages/month
if you cancelled would you feel entitled to go behind the counter and take the ink you've "purchased"?
You don't need to use the subscription model to use a printer, you can use regular cartridges.
I'm not suggesting they violated their agreement with the user, I'm saying that the terms of the agreement could have been more clearly communicated.
it's not an ink subscription
it's a printed pages subscription
you still have your printed pages after cancelling
I have a 14 year old HP office laser printer (P4515x). After replacing the main cartridge (with a third party one!) and upgrading the RAM, it works fine, and it plugs into my ethernet. MacOS recognized the bonjour protocol using the generic PostScript driver. It works fine plugged into my 10 gigabit ethernet switch with a cat 6 cable.
I mean, it's 2d printing; this is something we've more or less nailed since the 90s (more or less with the advent of PostScript I think?); as long as the computers in my network can speak the protocol, I don't really see what I'm missing out on by not having a new printer...except subscription fees.
I'm not saying it doesn't work for you, I'm saying it doesn't work for me and answering the question "what is one missing out on".
In fairness, I do think a lot of people really just have a printer around for the same reasons that I do, which is to print out primarily text documents, in which case I don't think most people would be missing a lot getting an old black and white laser printer. I have seen people spend a lot of money on printers and cartridges just to print out three pages of text every couple months, and those people would probably benefit from a cheap, old, black and white laser printer.
Borderless printing, color accuracy, the ability to use high-quality photo paper come to my mind.
I'll admit that maybe I was a bit reductive with my statement, let me amend it a bit: for a large percentage of common printing jobs, I don't think a lot of people are missing out by opting to not buy a new printer (except subscriptions).
The days of actually owning something that you can self service/repair are coming to an end.
Recurring revenue is valued at higher multiples than non-recurring revenue, and the math for how to value it is much simpler. Higher valuation multiples mean more ability to raise money or access debt liquidity in the market at a lower cost in either equity or interest.
This creates a powerful systematic incentive for companies to look for any and all opportunities to tack a subscription onto everything.
It’s so powerful that it can make sense for a company to trade higher non-recurring revenues for lower recurring revenues.
The only thing that will push back is if consumers revolt and stop buying things that require subscriptions, especially if the subscription doesn’t make any sense or as with this case has unacceptable terms.
Bottom line is that you get what you incentivize. If you see a pathological trend, look for the incentives.
As we should. I don't care how much sense it makes for the business. It doesn't make sense for me, and I'm the one making the purchasing decision. Those who play this kind of game to trade higher non-recurring revenue for lower recurring revenue won't have my revenue, whether recurring or non-recurring.
The big problem is when it's hidden. If it's clearly spelled out that this is the way they're going to play, fine. But if you buy a printer and then later find out that they're doing this, that's basically a deceptive business practice, because the terms aren't what you were led to believe they are. That's something where consumer protection laws should apply.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27ll_own_nothing_and_be_ha...
I need to replace my current color&laser Brother MFA . The printer still works but software support (on MacOS) has been discontinued. (The profile for CUPS comes with some helper bin/utility, it’s not a plain profile file). Also worth mentioning, the (smaller, not high-yield) color cartridges used to be ~$45 on and now they go for $70.
Honestly it's a horrible model for the customer but it's the world we live in now, you don't own anything you are just renting and are responsible for repairs. Sadly HP isn't any different than anybody else, try getting a white paper from Redhat without a subscription, try getting firmware from Dell without a subscription. First we monetized everything and now we are monetizing everything's lifecycle
https://linux.dell.com/ not only publishing firmware, they're also members of fwupd / LVFS.
> Sadly HP isn't any different than anybody else
Don't give in. There are less shitty companies and at least in the tech business there's many of us who have extra money that we can vote with, or can make recommendations to others (don't buy HP, maybe don't buy an inkjet in general).
That means:
- If I "buy" it in a store there should be clear signage that it is a rental and that I don't own the hardware. Ideally HP would mail consumers printers.
- there should be a line item on some bill saying "Printer rental" and when the rental concludes, they should send a shipping label to take it back.
- if the printer breaks, they should send a tech out to repair or exchange via mail. Heck the store where I rented it from could be paid by HP to do that.
Yes, this would cost HP money. Yes, HP might have to make hardware that isn't flimsy.
Instant Ink is an optional program. An optional program that is so grossly misunderstood that it has been a PR disaster since its inception and should really be scrapped.
The low capacity "starter" toner cartridge lasted through a few hundred pages, including printing all our wedding invitations. We designed the artwork to look like the output of a printing press, and printed onto parchment-like paper.
I've since swapped in a third party cartridge, and figure I won't need to replace it for another 5-10 years. The print quality is a bit lower than the OEM one, but certainly gets the job done.
Miraculously, I am able to reliably print to it from Arch Linux, over wifi!
I almost feel bad for Brother, I can't imagine they made more than a few dollars off of me, if that.
It's just easier to buy, say, a Brother printer and forget about it for many years (and I speak from experience here). I don't need printer drama in my life.
This is not a lot to ask, yet it's the only printer I've ever had that... behaves? It has one job and does it well.
With a few small tweaks, you can probably even trick it into telling HP that every cartridge is immediately empty and get them to send you hundreds of cartridges all for $0.99/month.
You're better off just getting a Brother all-in-one. Those things are tanks and Brother, for some reason, seems to have executive leaders with ethics. Their scanning software is also the only one that works well.
I really with that the public (and hence, retailers) would stop hawking cheap HP nonsense. It would be like if AT&T resurrected the Bell Labs name for a software sweatshop in Bangalore.
Anyone who doesn't print often really should buy a laser jet. If you don't print often and you print photos, just order it from a photo printing service.
How often do you need to print something anyway? Everyone has a document viewing device in their pocket (or more likely, in their hand) right now. Printing is obsolete, legacy tech that we really by and large don't need. I'll print some pictures to hang on the wall, I'll go to some place and pay the store a couple of bucks. Keeping your own printer these days is asinine unless you deal with governments daily, then you probably also need a fax machine.
Don't have kids, eh? ;-)
If you purchase a printer, it should be able to print. The subscription is described as :
> The subscription promises to send you ink when you're running low as long as you print within the designated number of pages.
So it seems its only related to when the ink is getting low. It doesn't mention "You will lose the ability to print documents should you cancel your subscription."
That would be considered leasing a printer.
This is predatory too as the OP mentions the subscription was attached to the newly purchased printer.
> I bought an HP printer that came with an HP Instant Ink subscription a year ago.
So IMO there is no defense of HP here.
On their terms : https://instantink.hpconnected.com/us/en/v2/terms
> Consequences of Cancellation. You agree that HP will not be liable to You for any cancellation of Your Service or refusal of access to the Service or Site. Upon cancellation of Your Service for any reason mentioned in this Agreement, any rights granted to You under this Agreement will terminate and You must immediately cease all use of the Service and return the Subscription Cartridges to HP as detailed in Section 5.e (“Subscription Cartridges must be returned by You to HP”). Furthermore, any Promotion Incentives that you earned pursuant to the Refer-a-Friend Promotion will immediately expire upon termination of Your Service.
No mention of the printer being disabled ?
And it can. You just need to buy a regular cartridge now.
You purchased the printer. You licensed the ink cartridge, via pretty clear terms.
I am mistaken obviously as I thought it was a convenience of delivery subscription.
No mention of the printer being disabled, but mention that OP is required to return the cartridge that they didn't return.
If they actually intend for you to return the cartridge HPs position is a lot more reasonable. It's no longer "and we destroy the ink that you didn't use" it's "and we re-sell the ink you didn't use to someone else".
On the other hand if this is basically just a scam where they intend for you to think you have a working printer, when you don't, unless you resubscribe. Then that's despicable. The fact that they apparently didn't follow up asking for their cartridge back makes me suspicious that it is this.
I'd have thought it should be per-pint, or whatever. But then that would make it a purchase, rather than a subscription. I dunno, I wouldn't buy one of these contracts anyway; I despise HP printers.
Because the cost of page of text is so neglible in terms of ink that any limit that would let them upsell people printing text pages would be hit nearly instantly by people printing photos, and there's a lot more of the former group. It also lets them sell the potential that you'll print some colour photos at some point, when you won't.
Because that's easy to reason about. A page is a page, no worrying "ok, this document has 10 pages, but there are some big graphics, what percentage of the ink is that using".
> Doesn't that favour subscribers that use the printer to produce full-page, full-colour images at maximum saturation? Doesn't it disadvantage people who want a page of text?
Yes it does. Unsurprisingly, people in the first group are more likely to like and use this model, instead of buying ink cartridges.
Because that's the business model. Consumers care about the ability to print pages. They don't actually care about ink. As a consumer it's easy to see a subscription plan of 10 pages a month rather than 0.01 gallons of ink a month. The people that are disadvantaged are people who buy more pages than they use. This is offset by having unused prints rollover into the next month, but if you never print them then you have wasted that money.
The error messages were incredibly unhelpful (I like to believe they were too ashamed to tell you what was actually wrong).
Turns out their credit card was due to expire soon. Was shocked when I found that was the issue & had a hard time explaining what had gone wrong. I’ll definitely advise against HP printers going forward.
Once I figured out what the problem was, she was able to get the printer re-enrolled, but then it took a while for the printer to realize. And then, the ink was apparently dried up, because it didn't want to actually print. I don't have a problem with the HP printing plan, but clear messaging on the printer would help, and inkjets not being terrible would also help. (Also, it would help if my MIL wouldn't leave problems unsolved ... 'Ohh, it stopped working a few months ago', but that's a different issue)
> I never have to buy ink
You are buying ink, since you're not just sending documents/images/etc. off for some company to print on their hardware with their ink and their paper, you're getting ink in vendor-locked cartridges which you can only print while within their arbitrary "no. of pages" metric.
Also, you bought the printer, you buy the actual pages of paper, the subscription is called "Instant INK" and [1] literally says:
> To enroll in HP Instant Ink you need to have an eligible printer, which tells us when you're low on ink or toner and orders it for you. (emphasis mine)
Additionally their "plans" table in the FAQs of [1] makes clear that "unused" pages that you supposedly paid for with your subscription are limited in how many roll over each month, essentially invalidating a number of your "purchased" pages if you don't print as often as they would like you to.
Scummy all the way down
Honestly I wouldn't buy an HP anything at this point, since if they do this with printers they'll do it for other stuff.
Yet another reason to go laser printer, I've had mine for 7+ years and have yet to replace the cartridge. I don't do a lot of printing at home but it's convenient when I need it.
https://epson.com/For-Work/Printers/Inkjet/EcoTank-Photo-ET-...
Going to compare them to the current Brother line up.
Random: back in the day I had Epson dot matrix printers and they were a tank.
This particular DRM is designed to waste ink, because this ink you are prevented using is not going to be used by anyone. This ink has cost resources and human time to be produced, and is just going to be discarded for the sake of a making a subscription-based business model work. Which fundamentally makes it faulty.
We already produce too much waste, we don't need to produce some voluntarily.
This kind of practice is shameful and should be boycotted.
I don't care for arguments like "yeah you didn't pay for printing so it's only fair you are prevented from doing it". While I could agree with this, the end result is more waste.
HP should be forced to allow any ink it sends to be used completely.
(I am not suggesting that OP or anyone else getting screwed on a subscription thing are in the wrong.)
Printer A is $500 up front, printer B is $100, sounds like a great deal until you do the math and realize that it's designed to make you pay a lot more than $400 more in cryptographically-signed consumables over its lifetime. I'm sure there is a very nice big bonus waiting for the HP employee who can figure out a way to make a printer that only works with Genuine Authorized HP Paper as well as Genuine authorized HP Ink, and pitch it in a way the consumers will accept.
The punch line: that POS wouldn't even let me scan with the "expired" printhead in place.
HP: Never Again.
https://www.hp.com/us-en/hp-information/sustainable-impact.h...
How the hell is it sustainable to throw half a cartridge away?
Because its a real issue today. And with the twin pressures of growing threats from climate and against democracy it is this very kind of stupidly nterdependent complexity which can act as a kind of Achilles heel PITA when enough of the dice all happen to roll a certain way, at once.
We saw it happen due to COVID: the massive but also weird and counter-intuitive economic distortions. But I believe its likely to happen on a much larger scale in the future. Therefore we'd all be best served by choosing to use as many robust/redundant (and anti-fragile) tools as we can.
Preppers once seemed crazy. I believe you'd almost have to be crazy to NOT be a prepper anymore. (Thus, my game: a mix of entertainment, but also education and hopefully political influence and a little bit more shifting of mindsets.)
Example rules of thumb I help to teach:
1. Never own a hammer with a remote kill switch.
2. Never borrow/rent/lease a hammer. Own it, possess it, know where it is, control access to it.
3. Have two (or more) hammers.
etc.
---
He doesn't print a lot, so often times cartridges would dry up. Now with the subscription thats no problem anymore. Don't worry about running out, don't worry about dried cartridges, don't worry about missing one color, ...
You get exactly what you pay for: printing x pages per month (and they even roll over to the next months)
If you don't like subscriptions don't sign up.
I have a 5+ year old HP laser printer. I'm sure the toners have some form of electronic "authenticity" check, but at least they work without requiring network connectivity or a subscription, and they were also still able to squeeze out images until the very end until the results visibly started lacking color, the printer showed warning messages but didn't refuse printing (nor scanning!) or anything.
So given the many articles about HP DRM on HN now: is this subscription something new that HP introduced in the last 5 years? Or is it only for inkjet printers, not laser?
Just asking because if this laser printer breaks and I need to find a new one, can one still get one without subscription requirement from HP today? I like the hardware, but would not buy if it requires this now.
You're just renting the ink, even when it's on the paper.
And if you don't continue your IaaS subscription, everything you already printed will disappear.
Wait, what exactly are you subscribing to?
Their marketing page is very clear that it’s a set number of pages per month:
You shouldn't think of it is cartridges or ink, but in terms of pages per month while you pay, when you stop paying you get no pages. This was introduced a long time ago, I used to work in retail, it was always very clear what this was.
You don't try to play a song on Spotify from a downloaded playlist, two years after you stopped paying for Spotify, although stupid, that is how you have to think of this subscription and that is always what it was and it was always very clear.
So how long before the non-technical general population shuns the brand? I can’t believe that this strategy wins for them in the long run.
To get you to think about this some more, apply this to computing and storage as a service.
The gotcha risk is far ... far higher than you think.
Caveat cloud/aaS emptor.