I bought an HP printer that came with an HP Instant Ink subscription a year ago. The subscription promises to send you ink when you're running low as long as you print within the designated number of pages.<p>I recently changed my card and figured I would let the subscription expire.<p>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 (!).<p>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.<p>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.<p>This has to be one shadiest and just overall worst product experiences I've come across in a while.<p>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.<p>[0] <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20230522114823/https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Printers-Knowledge-Base/Cancelled-Instant-Ink-service-and-now-I-can-t-print/ta-p/7037780" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20230522114823/https://h30434.ww...</a>
I think that HP does a lot of shady shit. But I actually think that this is fair. If you purchase a subscription for 100 pages/month or whatever you can't expect to cancel and keep printing for a while after you stop paying. I think it is reasonable that they provide both options. You can go with the subscription and you don't own the ink, but HP manages refilling and replacing as needed. Or you can buy your own ink and mange it yourself. I don't think that you can expect both.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
I’ve been a very happy Brothers customer for nearly two decades. We still have the same laser printer. Would highly recommend a laser printer over ink printers in most cases and would advocate for Brothers over any other brand printer at this point. The printer we have has never had any issues, including a situation where a bunch of boba tea spilled into the printer. Hosed it down, let it dry, and still works!
Can't believe people in this thread condoning this practice and sticking up for HP!<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.
This is the kind of stuff the Defective by Design campaign [1], which opposes DRMs, has been warning us about.<p>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.<p>We already produce too much waste, we don't need to produce some voluntarily.<p>This kind of practice is shameful and should be boycotted.<p>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.<p>HP should be forced to allow any ink it sends to be used completely.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.defectivebydesign.org/" rel="nofollow">https://www.defectivebydesign.org/</a>
As I told here before; buy a printer, don't rent it. Get yourself a EPSON EcoTank. Yes they are pricy, yes they require some more maintenance but you BUY the printer. EPSON does not care if you buy ink from them of another party. No chips in the cartridges because there are non. It works with tanks. You can fill it with the ink you want. When I use a online store to buy ink that has clone-cartridges for each type of printer on the planet they do not have a replacement for the ink for my printer as they can not supply cheaper ones than the one EPSON sells. €40 for a set of four. And they last for about 3 years. And since I do not print that much... way longer...
I spent the best part of a sunny Saturday trying to work out why an elderly relative’s HP printer wasn’t working.<p>The error messages were incredibly unhelpful (I like to believe they were too ashamed to tell you what was actually wrong).<p>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.
I recall seeing this mentioned in the setup screen when they tried to sell my uncle on their stupid ink scheme. This crap is why reading the simplified terms of service matters.<p>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.<p>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.
This is why I never buy ink jet printers, and I also usually buy thoroughly-used office printers.<p>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.<p>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.
You bought one of the printers that end with an "e". For example:<p>HP OfficeJet Pro 9025e
vs
HP OfficeJet Pro 9025<p>OR<p>HP LaserJet Pro M234sdwe
vs
HP LaserJet Pro M234sdw<p>The "e" printers support subscription based ink and require an internet connection otherwise they won't print.<p>- It says it all over the outside of the box<p>- It says it in the box on multiple sheets of paper in big text<p>- It says it when you are installing the driver<p>- It says it when you are purchasing the subscription<p>The cost of the printer is subsidized to some extent (similar to carrier locked phones) and they are subscription based printers.<p>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.
PSA: When you sign up for a subscription service you're telling the company they should keep doing what they're doing. What they're doing is repeatedly taking (often small) steps to degrade your rights and give themselves more power over you & your wallet. If you give them an inch, they'll take the piss.<p>(I am not suggesting that OP or anyone else getting screwed on a subscription thing are in the wrong.)
Can we actually have a discussion on here about printer manufacturers' practices, and which companies engage in this type of behaviour?
If we could figure out who the companies that don't engage in this are, maybe we can change our purchasing decisions slightly and help steer the market towards less craziness.
To everyone defending this, if you were to cancel a physical magazine or newspaper subscription, should the publisher be allowed to send goons to break into your house and burn all of the issues they already sent you, or should they have to settle for just not sending you any more new ones?
Gotta love the subscription model, don't buy a BMW with heated seats.<p>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
HP: pushing Samuel Vimes' "Boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness[1] to the limit.<p>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 <i>lot</i> more than $400 more in cryptographically-signed consumables over its lifetime. I'm sure there is a <i>very</i> 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.<p>1: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory</a>
At this point I won't even own a printer anymore. I'll just go to a print shop or office store type place, let them deal with this type of bullshit if they want. In a pinch I probably have a friend with a printer.<p>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.
Some years back, my employer's HP all-in-one decided to expire the <i>printhead</i>. WTF? I could see throwing a warning if a clog were detected, but no, this was time-based. I'd never heard of any rational reason beyond clogs to replace a printhead, and if it's replaceable, it ought to be cleanable.<p>The punch line: that POS wouldn't even let me <i>scan</i> with the "expired" printhead in place.<p>HP: Never Again.
This has been posted to Hacker News before. The terms are clear. Pay X per month for Y prints (and I provide the paper). When I have a problem, I like not having to buy expensive ink carts and hoping it fixes my printer. All that is on HP. I just provide the paper. I’m using a $60 printer and am totally happy with it. I also have a Brother B&W laser, which is great when color is mot needed.
I had to buy a printer recently, too. When I saw those subscriptions my first thought was there will come a day when everything we "own" is tied to a subscription/account.<p>The days of actually owning something that you can self service/repair are coming to an end.
Oh yeah... hp..<p><a href="https://www.hp.com/us-en/hp-information/sustainable-impact.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.hp.com/us-en/hp-information/sustainable-impact.h...</a><p>How the hell is it sustainable to throw half a cartridge away?
Within the next couple years I'll likely be looking for a new printer. What are the best printers today that don't engage in this sort of nonsense?
It's like subscribing to Dollar Shave Club and later finding out you can't shave your beard with the blades already sent to your home when your subscription expires because the TOS said the subscription is for shaving x times per month and the blades are owned by the company. Complete nonsense.
People defending this need to rethink their ethics. This is the absolute scum behavior the printer industry has been known for (and successfully sued over in the past). If you buy a printer and separately get an ink subscription, the subscription lapsing should have nothing to do with the functioning of the printer. Ink subscriptions and printer leasing are old hat in the business space, and in no case does the printer stop functioning (leased or purchased) because you cancel the ink subscription.
It's a page subscription. If you print a page with one dot on it, or a full color 8x10 photo you are charged the same, one page. It's not an unk subscription.
The anti-pattern of IoT and their creepily Orwellian dependence "on the cloud" or the ability to "phone home" for "reasons" no one understands is a minor running gag in a game I've been building [SB]. Fragility of our civilization's life support systems and critical shared infrastructure, in general, is a theme.<p>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 <i>stupidly</i> 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.<p>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.<p>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.)<p>Example rules of thumb I help to teach:<p>1. Never own a hammer with a remote kill switch.<p>2. Never borrow/rent/lease a hammer. Own it, possess it, know where it is, control access to it.<p>3. Have two (or more) hammers.<p>etc.<p>---<p>[SB] - <a href="https://synystrongames.itch.io/slartboz" rel="nofollow">https://synystrongames.itch.io/slartboz</a>
as much as I hate subscriptions this doesn't sound unreasonable<p>you're paying for X pages a month, and the ink is supplied to you to allow you to do that<p>would it be any different if you were in the local staples paying for X pages/month<p>if you cancelled would you feel entitled to go behind the counter and take the ink you've "purchased"?
I recommend brother laser printers to everyone. They are like Toyotas: beasts that just keep running without issues for years. The cartridges last for a long time and also do dry up (a problem I had with inkjets due to infrequent printing).
Yeah, I don't understand the defense to this. There are a lot of analogies being thrown around but it doesn't address the main point.<p>If you purchase a printer, it should be able to print. The subscription is described as :<p>> The subscription promises to send you ink when you're running low as long as you print within the designated number of pages.<p>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."<p>That would be considered leasing a printer.<p>This is predatory too as the OP mentions the subscription was attached to the newly purchased printer.<p>> I bought an HP printer that came with an HP Instant Ink subscription a year ago.<p>So IMO there is no defense of HP here.<p>On their terms : <a href="https://instantink.hpconnected.com/us/en/v2/terms" rel="nofollow">https://instantink.hpconnected.com/us/en/v2/terms</a><p>> 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.<p>No mention of the printer being disabled ?
My father uses this subscription without any problems.<p>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, ...<p>You get exactly what you pay for: printing x pages per month (and they even roll over to the next months)
This has been discussed to death here. This is a subscription service for X pages per month, not X ink cartridges per month/year. If you cancel the subscription you can't keep printing.<p>If you don't like subscriptions don't sign up.<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34688856" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34688856</a>
HP cartridges with DRM have come up a lot on HN lately.<p>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.<p>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?<p>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 are paying for prints, not ink. Whether the cartridge contains ink or not is irrelevant. I am totally pleased with Instant Ink as that $55 printer rarely gives me trouble and I never have to buy ink. Support is pretty decent
Based on other similar threads, people tend to suggest Brother. Are there any other (slightly better) alternatives?<p>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.
Up next:<p>You're just renting the ink, even when it's on the paper.<p>And if you don't continue your IaaS subscription, everything you already printed will disappear.
> The subscription promises to send you ink when you're running low as long as you print within the designated number of pages.<p>Wait, what exactly are you subscribing to?<p>Their marketing page is very clear that it’s a set number of pages per month:<p><a href="https://instantink.hpconnected.com/us/en/l/v2" rel="nofollow">https://instantink.hpconnected.com/us/en/l/v2</a>
Never ever buy an HP printer.<p>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.
Setting all the morality and ethics discussions aside, after so many of these stories, I made a mental note not to buy <i>any</i> HP printer ever again, just because there seems to be so much complexity and unexpected trouble.<p>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 on you. This is always what Instant Ink was, it's always been very clear and this is what you signed up too, so i don't know what the issue is?<p>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.<p>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.
This is your time to channel that anger into dumping the firmware and firing up Ghidra.<p>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.
Instant Ink ("II") is a POS. If you get a subscription to II and then cancel it, you will no longer be able to use ink by a manufacturer other than HP. I don't care if I had to return the II when I canceled it; that's no big deal. But to make me use only HP ink? That's quite a bit of BS.
I did order HP ink because my printer stopped printing. (Luckily I have a Brother printer that's hooked up and printing (with 3rd party ink.))
Once the HP ink runs out, I'm going to try to refill the cartridges with other ink. Hopefully my FU to HP works.
Same for Cannon pixma print plan. I have 2 brand new cartridges that I cant use because apparently they can be used only if I keep ~$6 monthly subscription which I absolutely dont need. HP and Cannon are on the black-list of brands.
Based on these practices, I cannot support HP any more (I was a fan of HP's UNIX workstations). If you plan to buy a printer, consider purchasing a laser printer from Kyocera, Brother or Lexmark.
Why's it treated as being a "per page" subscription? 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?<p>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.
The same reason I will never subscribe for a desktop app (parallels, 1password etc), I will do my best to talk every friend out of supporting scams like HP
It's still totally shady and BS but it sounds like you just cannot use the ink purchased with the subscription? Presumably, you can buy ink somewhere else and it will work?<p>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.
How long is this model sustainable? How long before they have a reputation of a firm to be avoided? This isn’t the first we’ve heard and I’d wager we all know it by now.<p>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.
It is really simple. Stop buying HP products and any others with shady business practices. For years Brother laser printers have been recommended on HN (except that one time they weren't). Just buy one and forget about your printer. Personally, I'm tired of reading about people being duped with printers.
stop buying hp, stop your friends and family from buying hp, stop your work from buying hp. Thats the only solution, and its long term. HP will do whatever they want, the only thing you can do is refuse to give HP any money for any reason and insist everyone you provide technical expertise for does the same.
... it's why I print with one of these<p><a href="https://epson.com/For-Work/Printers/Inkjet/EcoTank-Photo-ET-8550-All-in-One-Wide-format-Supertank-Printer/p/C11CJ21201" rel="nofollow">https://epson.com/For-Work/Printers/Inkjet/EcoTank-Photo-ET-...</a>
I don't support this at all. This is printing as a service, with interesting consequences once you cancel the service even with remaining assets available to you.<p>To get you to think about this some more, apply this to computing and storage as a service.<p>The gotcha risk is far ... far higher than you think.<p>Caveat cloud/aaS emptor.
When I got married, my wife was subscribed to HP Instant Ink. Was one of the first things I cancelled. I couldn't believe that the ink didn't work afterwards. Made me want to reverse engineer it somehow, but wasn't really worth my time.
Cases like that arise when you want to force a certain monetization practice and it does not match perfectly with the reality. To make it more palatable, HP should offer a way to buy the remaining ink or ask to return (free of charge) the cartridge.
I eagerly await when they invent ink that would fade unless you pay for the daily subscription. With the explanation that you are just renting the printing result, but it's actually owned by HP.
I won't name any names or make any specific advert but I bought myself a printer with refillable cartridges and it's the cheapest and sanest printer experience I had in over 25 years.
I think "pay per printing even at home" is a good concept and it should be useful for some users, but it seems that their advertising is a bit failed.
If this was not obvious when you bought the ink then surely this simply a fraud on the part of HP. Do they do this everywhere in the world? Or just the US?
I... don't see the problem? The subscription is 1€ a month for up to ten pages, with accumulation over two months for unused credit. That's next to nothing, a whole year of that costs less than a menu at McDonalds.