HP Allegedly Time Bombs Unofficial Ink Cartridges from Working in Its Printers

The best way to make a difference against this nastyness realistically available to us is probably the &quot;one star review&quot;.<p>And when you do, resist writing 10 paragraphs about all the times HP has ever wronged you or a long story about how much you needed the printout when it refused to print.<p>One star, one sentence. &quot;Expires full inks after only x months forcing you to buy new ones when you don&#x27;t need them.&quot;<p>I know for certain these short, sweet reviews change the buying behavior of my non-techie family.<p>Make a difference. Write a product review today.

Such behaviour is the reason I threw out a perfectly working HP OfficeJet one day and will never buy a single HP printer in my life.<p>In the OfficeJet in question I only used genuine cartridges, but every few year it would stop receiving black and white faxes because (the nearly full) color cartidge was passing its expiry date - forcing me to throw away the full color cartridge and buying a new one.

Slightly offtopic, but, I&#x27;ve been using a HP printer for the past years (Photosmart D7360) and am also VERY annoyed, one example: whenever one of my <i>color</i> cartridges is past it&#x27;s expiry date i can&#x27;t print in <i>black and white</i>. Even though the black cartridge is brand new. I first have to go buy a new color cartridge (which i don&#x27;t use) and then i can print in black again. The warning message says something like &quot;if you print with an outdated cartridge it may damage the printer&quot;.<p>seriously, will never buy a HP printer again.

Can confirm, this happened to our HP 6830 printer on September 13. Extremely annoyed because we only bought this printer in June, and was working fine with a replacement ink. I was actually researching legal precedents to this, and learned that Lexmark has been fighting something like this in court for over a decade[1].<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.techdirt.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;20160214&#x2F;16294133605&#x2F;after-failing-to-use-copyright-trademark-law-to-stop-printer-ink-resellers-lexmark-finally-scores-victory-with-patent-law.shtml" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.techdirt.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;20160214&#x2F;16294133605&#x2F;after...</a>

There&#x27;s the Epson Eco-Tank series. Ink is in four bottles at the side of the machine, good for about 4000-6000 pages. Refill with Epson ink bottles or (a bit more messily) from bulk ink. The printer costs about $279.<p>You do have to clean the print heads occasionally. That&#x27;s the price of long life print heads.

Not sure if it was a time bomb, but HP does have an &quot;auto update&quot; feature that could <i>seem</i> like a time bomb.<p>We got nailed by this with our HP 8610. Were using 3rd party cartridges with much success for months. Last week my wife had a huge (for us) print job and encountered an annoying bug (prints blank sheets every other print). Updated the firmware hoping it would fix the problem. Next thing we know, cartridge error.<p>Spent 3-4 hours researching how to downgrade firmware with no luck.<p>No mentioned of new Sept 13 firmware on any HP driver website that I found.<p>3rd party is shipping us new cartridges for free, but it will be 2 weeks. Had to buy another printer.<p>Die in a fire HP.

Somebody mentioned Brother printers elsewhere.<p>I replaced my HP laser with a Brother laser a while back (just printing &quot;stuff&quot;, not photos)<p>I replaced my black cart on the HP (2600n) with a 3rd party product, and got away with it. However, when I replaced the color carts (one ran out), which I was forced to, since it wouldn&#x27;t print B&amp;W at all otherwise, the printer detected the alien carts, and immediately refused to clean itself or something - I started getting black streaks on my black text, even though the black cart worked just fine for months the day before.<p>Bye bye, HP, you ain&#x27;t what you used to be.

I think this calls for a cheap open source printer to be made. Nothing complex is needed initially, just black and white with low running costs. In reality, any liquid that stains the paper of a given consistency should be fine. It shouldn&#x27;t be costing this much to replace ink.

I wouldn&#x27;t doubt it for a second. Printer makers use the razor&#x2F;razorblade model for consumables, where the printer&#x27;s dirt cheap, but the ink costs an arm and a leg. This is just the latest tactic for getting people to go OEM only.<p>At this point, I long for the good old days, when Canon embraced 3rd party ink vendors. Canon&#x27;s cartridges were cheap because the print heads were a separate, replaceable, item, and the third parties were more than free to put out really interesting inks, like sets of greyscale for making really nice black and white prints.

Laser OKI color printer isn&#x27;t different.<p>Each toner (CMYK) has a life based on printed pages and stop working even if there&#x27;s toner inside. No third part supplier, because the printer won&#x27;t recognize it. And it&#x27;s useless torefill it if you don&#x27;t change some chip in each toner.<p>And then the fusor will also stop after some number of pages, no matter if the quality was still good. To replace it you spend more than you paid for the printer.<p>So OKI was in my banned list, now HP joins it.

I haven&#x27;t owned and HP printer in a while, but this article will stop me from making an HP printer my next purchase if and when I need one. What a dirty, cheap tactic by HP! They&#x27;ll fire some low-wage earner worker and a mid-level manager over this, while the real culprit stays at his job I&#x27;m sure. Definitely class-action, and even criminal, no? Consumer fraud, deception?<p>Third-party replacements are running fine in my Samsung and Canon, without a complaint.

Are there any open hardware printers in the making?<p>I seem to recall some open hardware cell phone projects. No reason a similar effort couldn&#x27;t be directed towards making an open printer, is there?<p>Also, it might not even require making a full open hardware printer, but just some key circuitry and maybe some drivers, right?

How I get screwed: My HP printer will occasionally print a black-and-white page using all three colors of ink. Discovered this one day when I rubbed a fresh page and it smeared three colors. They call it &#x27;wear leveling&#x27; or something. But we all know it means &#x27;using up your expensive color ink instead of your cheap black ink&#x27;. What a crock.

Stop buying dirt-cheap printers that are sold at a loss. These are <i>designed</i> to be paid off by expensive toner &#x2F; ink. These are designed to make you waste the supplies if you don&#x27;t use them up fast enough. They are designed to reject third-party cheaper supplies.<p>Pay a couple hundred more upfront for a no-bullshit device. I hope those still exist.

If this is affecting printers in Australia, then HP are going to learn a very costly lesson in ethics. The ACCC will have to do an investigation, but the instant they confirm this has occurred they will face stiff fines for third line forcing and anti-competitive behaviour distorting the market.

Does this also happens with laser toner cartridges ? I really have no idea why people even buy those inkjet printers anymore, price per page is lower with laser printers and prices even for a color laser are in sub 200€$ range.

Liberate yourself from softwares&#x2F;products like this!<p>We used to own the stuff we paid for! Now it&#x27;s like you pay to be the product. I think this problem is worse in software.<p>Checkout fsf.org

I&#x27;ve had nothing but great success using third party ink with Epson printers. Every two-three years I buy a new epson printer and either a continuous ink system or refillable cartridges. I never worry about the kids printing too much or the print cartridge getting dry and clogging.<p>Epson gets used a lot as a base in the third party space - for things like T-shirt printers and other textile based printing. The print heads are reliable and accurate.

This kind of reminds me of how some of these companies disable the scanner portion of &quot;All-in-One&quot; type printers if the printer portion is out of ink.

Old, but still so true:<p>&quot;Why I Believe Printers Were Sent From Hell To Make Us Miserable&quot;<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;theoatmeal.com&#x2F;comics&#x2F;printers" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;theoatmeal.com&#x2F;comics&#x2F;printers</a><p>Had this one printed out (oh that irony) and taped it to our office wall when we had to deal with crappy printers on a daily basis working for a big DAX company.

I guess it&#x27;s time due for a rerun of Ken Thomson&#x27;s reverse engineering of Mergenthaler Linotron.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cs.princeton.edu&#x2F;~bwk&#x2F;202&#x2F;summer.reconstructed.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cs.princeton.edu&#x2F;~bwk&#x2F;202&#x2F;summer.reconstructed.pd...</a>

In southeast Asia, you can get an Epson L300 tank printer for about $170 USD. Each tank refill costs $10 and lasts for 10,000 pages. This line of printers isn&#x27;t offered in the US. It&#x27;s market segmentation. I think it&#x27;s indicative of the level of oligopoly in the printer industry that they can segment this well and get away with it.

This isn&#x27;t even remotely surprising. in early 2000&#x27;s work had 5 heavy duty color laser printers from HP to print B&amp;W letters on. All carts stopped working after a certain page count. Even if the color wasn&#x27;t used it would decrement the counter. We threw out THOUSANDS of full color toner cartridges.

I&#x27;m fairly sure this is illegal in the EU under one of the e-waste directives.

Inkjet printers have been simply the most loathsome category of electronics I&#x27;ve encountered. Concluded some years ago to never own one again. Garbage! Zero tolerance!

For anyone tired of paying so much for ink replacements, look into a CISS (Continuous Ink Supply System) [1]. I got one for our Epson and it far outperforms ink cartridges and even the replacement ink is cheap.<p>I&#x27;ve had some issues with the printer recognizing the cartridges, but after fiddling around enough it eventually does. It&#x27;s definitely worth the effort.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;XUANCAI-Continuous-cartridge-Printer-Cartridge&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B01G701EBK" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;XUANCAI-Continuous-cartridge-Printer-...</a>

Is there any legitimate reason to be buying an inkjet versus a laser? I would personally never buy an inkjet again in my life regardless of the brand.

just few days back (possible Sept 13th) I got the following error message<p>One or more cartridges appear to be damaged. Remove them and replace with new cartridges<p>I was using non-hp ink cartridges.<p>I&#x27;ve been HP customer for 20 years, and I&#x27;m done with HP for their dishonesty.

I bought a Lexmark laser printer about 12 years ago. A few days ago I bought my very first replacement toner cartridge for it - until this point I have been using the included cartridge, which is probably a half-capacity one. As you can guess, I do a lot of printing.<p>The box for the cartridge actually says that it will:<p>1) Only dispense a certain amount of toner before the printer will stop printing and that there will still be some toner left in the cartridge when this happens.<p>2) Update the firmware on the printer so that it won&#x27;t accept 3rd-party cartridges.<p>3) Stuff about me agreeing to return the used cartridge to Lexmark for recycling since I bought a &quot;return program&quot; cartridge. Lexmark sold the cartridge for a reduced price, returning it for recycling is my end of the bargain.<p>They didn&#x27;t use these exact words, but it was very clearly written and seemed like it would be pretty understandable to a regular person.<p>On one hand, I have to give Lexmark props for full disclosure that doesn&#x27;t hide behind a click-through license or any weasel-words&#x2F;legalese. On the other hand, changing the printer after purchase to lock the owner into Lexmark cartridges seems kind of low.<p>I&#x27;m really not sure how I feel about this though. I don&#x27;t mind buying the manufacturer&#x27;s cartridges or packing up the old one to be returned. But at the same time I&#x27;m worried that, in another 12 years, Lexmark might no longer be making cartridges for this printer and I&#x27;ll have to throw the printer away.

As an aside, does anyone remember the last time they were happy with <i>ANY</i> HP product? Everytime I see that logo I get chills knowing what a pain in the ass it&#x27;s going to be.<p>Edit: I am specifically thinking about HPSM, and HPNA here.

I don&#x27;t know how the DRM works on ink cartridges, but if all the off-brand cartridges just use the same mass-produced cloned DRM &quot;chip&quot; (or whatever it is), it not possible this is actually caused by a certificate expiring rather than an intentionally malicious act by HP?<p>I really don&#x27;t have any clue what I&#x27;m talking about, just wondering if there&#x27;s any alternative cause whatsoever.

Reverse engineering is a must in this case. I cannot be accepted that you got an HP printer and now you cannot use generic ink.<p>I never liked HP but now, no way I will consider to buy HP products at all.

So what is a good brand of laser printers that work well under Linux and accepts unofficial toners?

Also, don&#x27;t forget to mark &quot;helpful&quot; the most popular reviews that align with your opinion of HP&#x27;s current practices.

Real simple: if you don&#x27;t like it, go buy another brand printer. That&#x27;s the beauty of democracy: you&#x27;re free to buy another printer&#x2F;ink just like they&#x27;re allowed to protect their proprietary assets! Bunch of whiners....

Very dishonest practice from HP i&#x27;m never going to use any of their products again.

I gave up on inkjet printers a long time ago. Is there any justification for using inkjet over laser for black and white?

Canon printers with a &quot;Continuous Supply Ink Tank&quot; FTW. Now they even have official versions of these tanks.

<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.myce.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;hp-pre-programmed-failure-date-unofficial-non-hp-ink-cartridges-printers-80457&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.myce.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;hp-pre-programmed-failure-date-unof...</a><p>@mods That is the original source<p>HP also made a statement about this: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.myce.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;hp-officially-responds-pre-programmed-failure-date-non-hp-cartridges-80467&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.myce.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;hp-officially-responds-pre-programm...</a>

How is this legal?<p>As a side note, HP sells a (vintage) 256 MB DDR2 RAM module for $600 (USD) for it&#x27;s new printers.

The Amazon Basic is my go to brand, their are cheap and functional. I wish they get into printers.

how is this legal? It&#x27;s akin to a car shutting down if a non genuine part is used.

Update here, HP admits to doing this intentionally and makes excuses as to why... <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;hothardware.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;hp-admits-to-sabotaging-ink-cartridges" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;hothardware.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;hp-admits-to-sabotaging-ink-cart...</a>

Not trolling, but why do you use printers? I haven&#x27;t used paper for 5 odd years now. The gov here (Spain) gives me tons of paper; I photograph it and then leave it and have them print it out when needed. Outside that I have not needed paper since the ipad. Why do other people?

There has to be enough former HP engineers to find one willing to answer this one definitively.

<i>Because of this sudden influx of complaints, it didn’t take long to trace the “failures” to a HP firmware update that was released during the spring.</i><p>I wonder how long it&#x27;ll be until someone hacks it and releases a firmware that has the checks patched out. I vaguely remember this being done for a few other chipped-cartridge printers many years ago, although that was more intended for CIS ( <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Continuous_ink_system" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Continuous_ink_system</a> ) where it makes no sense for the printer to keep thinking it&#x27;s using small cartridges.

Here is a (probably worthless) idea:<p>Create 1 or 2 good, serviceable network printer and experiment with different business models like subscriptions or pay-as-you-print, where the printer manufacturer _owns_ the printer an office or home just rents it.<p>In such a model, the companies incentives would align with the users values:<p>- Cheaper printing per page<p>- Less overhead on distribution<p>- No artificial costs and limitations<p>- Generally better printer:<p><pre><code> - More serviceable - Better software - Long term support </code></pre> - More environmentally friendly<p>Most people I know doesn&#x27;t own a printer and just use the office printer anyway, so why not make the office printer just-work?<p>Edit: formatting

There is a little chip inside the cartridge, EPSON&#x27;s chip was cloned in China so you can use the third-party inks &quot;safely&quot;, however it&#x27;s not the case for HP.<p>I had not bought any HP products for 10+ years.

For $69 it&#x27;s easy enough to buy a different printer brand.<p>I buy a new ink cartridge and put it in my old printer and it doesn&#x27;t work. Why should I assume the problem is the new ink cartridge and not the old printer?

If this can be proven, and a class action lawsuit is filed, this would spell the end of HP. I don&#x27;t think they would have any choice but to declare bankruptcy.

Reminds me of the last HP printer I owned and the priceless reviews people wrote about it:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;gp&#x2F;aw&#x2F;review&#x2F;B0076O2A4C&#x2F;RUHTFX2XOZQFY" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;gp&#x2F;aw&#x2F;review&#x2F;B0076O2A4C&#x2F;RUHTFX2XOZQFY</a><p>True, it was cheap, but the way in which it malfunctioned was so much over the top that I&#x27;ll never buy HP printers again.

I wonder how this will play out. This should get the attention of consumer rights watchdog at least, but possibly also class action suite.

Just get a CISS printer. I got an Epson L300 when I started college (4 years ago) and the printer is still going strong and I still have one full bottle of black ink (it came with 3x black ink bottles in the box). It was about $150 when I bought it and I spent $0 on ink.

Well, on my mom Windows 10 pc hp software asked her if the cartridge was pirate (unofficial?). Well, actually it was original, the only thing is that I&#x27;m keeping an empty color cartridge instead of replacing it since I only use black... I&#x27;m wondering wtf happened there

If you&#x27;re gonna do something sketchy like this, at least be smart about it.<p>HP could learn from Apple...

I&#x27;m not a legal expert, but I want to believe that there is some law preventing manufacturers from sabotaging their own products in order to extract more coin from your consumers.<p>I want to believe...

I hope HP can prevent <i>all</i> their future customers from talking to informed parties, or reading informed reviews. Seems rather self destructive of them.

Can anyone recommend a good Soho printer at this point?

Well, I&#x27;m glad I basically don&#x27;t need to print anymore. Not sure what luck got me here, but I sure as hell aren&#x27;t going back.

any hard evidence about pre-programmed date on firmware?<p>I think this is evil and smart, - people would by printers - some unofficial ink cartridge market will add good reviews etc (low printing cost) - increased cartridge sales for HP after set date<p>Sounds more like, unofficial iPhone cables not charging, but smarter (possibly illegal though)<p>edit: some google search reveals[1] more like firmware update at September 13 (auto update), then pre-set date. Pretty much like Apple and third party cable update.<p>edit2: More I read, I start to see 3rd party cartidge vendors didn&#x27;t implement the chipset on cartridge fully compatible, instead they went easy way around.<p>Third party ink vendor says: &quot;We do not yet have an updated chipset that will work with this new firmware version. . Customers can expect cartridge replacements with updated chipsets to be available in two to three weeks, possibly longer.&quot;<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.therecycler.com&#x2F;posts&#x2F;hp-inc-firmware-update-locks-out-remanufactured-cartridges-2&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.therecycler.com&#x2F;posts&#x2F;hp-inc-firmware-update-lock...</a>

Is there any brand of printer that that doesn&#x27;t do that kind of thing?

second sneaky thing I have heard about them recently, there was also a big thing about them disabling the printers when you unsubscribe from the instant ink package.

I feel like we have this discussion every week.

Sadly, HP doesn&#x27;t have a reality distortion field. Apple would have gotten away with this and some clever marketing.

I&#x27;m not sure HP is smart enough to do this nefariously.