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...
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
[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.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30553662
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
https://www.brother-usa.com/products/HLL2320D
https://www.brother-usa.com/products/HLL3270CDW
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.
Deleted Comment
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.
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
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.
Dead Comment
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.
[1] https://www.defectivebydesign.org/
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.
I have not looked at how easy it would be to clean out, reuse and reset the box but I suspect it is possible.
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)
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.
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.
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).