HP Remotely Disables a Customer's Printer Until He Joins Company's Monthly Subscription Service (twitter.com) 323
A Twitter user's complaint last week in which he produces photo evidence of HP warning him that his ink cartridges would be disabled until he starts paying for HP Instant Ink monthly subscription service has gone viral on the social media.
Ryan Sullivan, the user who made the complaint, said he only discovered the warning after cancelling a random HP subscription -- which charged him $4.99 a month -- after "over a year" of the billing cycle. "Cartridge cannot be used until printer is enrolled in HP Instant Ink," Sullivan was informed by an error message.
Ryan Sullivan, the user who made the complaint, said he only discovered the warning after cancelling a random HP subscription -- which charged him $4.99 a month -- after "over a year" of the billing cycle. "Cartridge cannot be used until printer is enrolled in HP Instant Ink," Sullivan was informed by an error message.
Take it back to the store for an refund and (Score:4, Insightful)
Take it back to the store for an refund and ask them to show you the EULA before you buy.
Yes, let's look at the agreement (Score:5, Informative)
If more people had read about the actual agreement before making knee-jerk comments here, they'd look a bit less foolish.
This guy was already on a subscription, and the terms were X pages per month (not what was on those pages or how much ink it used).
He chose to cancel that subscription, and so he didn't get any more pages. Technically, he might also be required to return the spare ink.
He always had the option to buy regular ink cartridges instead, but chose not to.
You can think whatever you want about that sort of subscription plan, but it doesn't seem like anything wasn't completely clear up-front here or like there's anything shady or illegal going on. We also have no idea how much this person might have gained from being on that plan until this point.
Re:Yes, let's look at the agreement (Score:5, Insightful)
One employee at our company used HP Instant Ink. You pay by the print instead of by the cartridge. You don't purchase ink, instead the printer automatically pings HP to mail you some more ink when it senses it will run out. If you cancel the service, the printer will reject the ink after a while. It seems fair since you never bought the ink to begin with.
You shouldn't use the service if you don't understand it. We understood it, and for one employee who printed in color the most, it made sense until we got into other solutions.
How does someone in the IT sector not understand subscription models? How were they so surprised that they needed to tweet about it? I expect that from my parents. Not this industry. And again, HP is no saint and ink is terribly overpriced.
Re:Yes, let's look at the agreement (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Yes, let's look at the agreement (Score:5, Insightful)
payments are completely detached from the actual costs
Rent! Rent! Everyone wants to suckle up to that golden teat of money for nothing over time which is rent. Costs be damned, it's TIME that is money! Now pay your rent.
Re: (Score:3)
I did sign up for instant ink, while I'm still on my first round of cartridges, it cost me $2 in nearly a year. I'm on the $0 dollar plan which gives 15 pages per month. When I go over that the next pages cost $1 for each pack of 10, pages remaining are included in the 'rollover' (my account says 7 left in rollover). I so very rarely use my printer that this is perfect. Considering that when buying ink cartridges a'la carte people are paying 3 to 6 cents a page for black, at least twice as much for col
Re: (Score:3)
He could have easily joined the subscription service without knowledge these days. Companies are very misleading..
Agreed. Avoiding getting into a subscription is like walking on eggshells, partly because companies are allowed to keep your credit card details from a previous purchase and subsequently use it to charge you for something you did not ask for. This seems to have become acceptable because Joe Sixpack millenial thinks it's marvelous, as it saves him the bother of finding his credit card and entering the number on his fiddly little smartphone.
Companies love subscription models - apart from the fact that the
Re: (Score:3)
Buying and using regular ink cartridges doesn't disable the warning. OTOH, while the threat has been posting on my printer for over a year, the printer remains functional, as long as I cancel the dialog each time I print.
OTOH, I don't have my printer hooked up to the internet. Perhaps if I did, things would have turned out differently.
Have you EVER tried reading such an agreement? (Score:3)
Even if you can decode more than half of it, it is the mother of all underhanded lying by omission and implication.
They WILL go "But it was meant in THAT way that is *completely non-obvious* until you are told it. Didn't you read it? ... Suuure you will go to court. lol"
"Oh, and we didn't say your child would NOT be taken away to a Vatican rape farm!"
"Oh you will go to court? You and what army of lawyers? Cause we got one. And people who think like us will be the judges too.
So people like you, with this typ
Re:Take it back to the store for an refund and (Score:5, Interesting)
Or much simpler: Go to setup -> system setup -> supplies -> cartridge policy, set it to 'off' instead of 'authorized HP'.
Done.
Re: (Score:2)
Carly isn’t Jewish either. So your entire screed is misplaced on top of being horribly misplaced.
Re: Take it back to the store for an refund and (Score:5, Insightful)
The current President of the US
I find it interesting that someway, somehow, people can make every topic on /. turn into a Trump bashing.
Sabri's law: the first one to mention Trump in a discussion loses the argument and the discussion is over.
Re: Take it back to the store for an refund and (Score:4, Funny)
I know it's pretty ridiculous. Especially since sooner or later someone will mention Hitler and... ...god damn it...*heavy sigh*
Re: (Score:3)
I know it's pretty ridiculous. Especially since sooner or later someone will mention Hitler and... ...god damn it...*heavy sigh*
We have a god winner!
Re: (Score:3)
*Off Topic*
The Spaniards did the same thing in the Americas, and then didn't let them change the name for the next couple hundred years. My father-in-law was teacher in the countryside for 33 years and had a list of some incredible last names the Spaniards gave to people.
Cusihuallpa - happy chicken
Haullpasuya - chicken thief
Sucasaca - slang at the time for a cuckhold
Sacacaca - take out the shit
and many more. The all-time worst was:
Alcoruntu - dog balls
Quality! (Score:2)
Re:Quality! (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Quality! (Score:5, Funny)
Instant Ink is Proof HP is broken (Score:5, Interesting)
I actually considered signing up for Instant Ink thinking that it would actually solve a real need. It would be great to automatically receive ink when I'm running low. I'd even be willing to pay a bit extra for the convenience.
Then I realized that it's a crazy subscription service which tells you how many "pages" you can print per month.. and bills you even if you didn't print a single page or need any ink.
Seriously... what an abject scam from a once great company.
Re:Instant Ink is Proof HP is broken (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder if AOL is still monthly charging CCs from their business model of 30 years ago, for people who completely forgot about it.
Re:Instant Ink is Proof HP is broken (Score:5, Interesting)
I actually considered signing up for Instant Ink thinking that it would actually solve a real need....
Ditto. I bought a new HP printer a year or so ago. I thought the prospect of "ink just sorta shows up on time" sounded great. The details, not so much.
Thing is, the headline seems misleading. HP didn't disable the printer, they disabled the cartridge. I expect he buys another cartridge (at normal retail prices), he's good to go. That was the deal: the monthly fee ensured he always had ink available up to N pages. Stop paying and he has no right to the ink any more. It doesn't matter where the ink is physically located.
BTW, this is pretty common in enterprise hardware and software in general. I've worked at several companies where we ship hardware which sits idle until you pay a license. In storage companies it's common to ship extra disks (because you need them for performance) but not let you use the full capacity of the disk until you buy a license. When you install freemium software, there's probably only one binary. The software you installed can do anything. It just refuses until you pay a fee.
That being said, it does seem petty to disable a working cartridge. Fer cryin' out loud HP, just let it go. The extra $40 (or whatever HP's cut is) isn't worth the bad press.
Re:Instant Ink is Proof HP is broken (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Instant Ink is Proof HP is broken (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
The service is advertised as "we'll send you more ink *when you run out*". He decided he didn't need that so cancelled. At what point was it mentioned that he would no longer be able to use up the ink *he already had*?
Re: (Score:3)
At what point was it mentioned that he would no longer be able to use up the ink *he already had*?
It literally took me 30 seconds to find that answer.
https://instantink.hpconnected... [hpconnected.com]
https://imgur.com/Q8CPFVK [imgur.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
And here's why they don't do that:
This approach is an easy way to thwart that kind of abuse. The only real alternative I can think of would involve charging the prorated value of the current ink cartridge as a cancell
Re: (Score:3)
You know which companies are real dick companies? Dildo manufacturers.
Re: (Score:3)
You know which companies are real dick companies? Dildo manufacturers.
Wouldn't they be fake dick companies?
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Instant Ink is Proof HP is broken (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
I actually considered signing up for Instant Ink thinking that it would actually solve a real need. It would be great to automatically receive ink when I'm running low. I'd even be willing to pay a bit extra for the convenience.
Then I realized that it's a crazy subscription service which tells you how many "pages" you can print per month.. and bills you even if you didn't print a single page or need any ink.
Seriously... what an abject scam from a once great company.
It depends on your usage. For our (moderate, home) usage, it actually saves us money over buying the crazy expensive cartridges the normal way.
YMMV, but it is better for some people.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I mean, it's a working business idea if people fall for it, isn't it?
There's nothing to "fall for". You actually have to sign up, and it's very clearly a subscription service.
Re:The OP paid for "over a year", others too (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
It depends where he bought the printer. I've had a few computer stores around here take a customer's credit card and sign them up for things.
Re:The OP paid for "over a year", others too (Score:5, Informative)
I'm guessing you have not attempted to install a recent HP inkjet printer.
It is a subscription service. No contest on that.
The installer makes it difficult to get a working printer without that subscription.
Difficult enough that I sent my wife back to the store to get a non-HP printer when her old one died. She bought an HP printer to replace it. I wasted a day trying to get it working without the subscription with wireless. I'm sure she, and some of you, think I botched the job. I don't think so. The Canon replacement she got worked right away, wireless and all.
I can see people just selecting the subscription out of exhaustion. I expect that is the intention.
Right to repair laws can fix this Just think i car (Score:2)
Right to repair laws can fix this Just think if an car had an forced dealer maintenance plan and if you did not buy your car stopped working.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Yeah, if only there was an open parts catalog from Tesla that you could from [tesla.com]....
They've had it since fall of 2018. Yes, you have to be Tesla Certified if you want to get computers, HV components, etc, and yes, tinkerers often complain when the particular part they want requires certification, but any garage can get certified [teslamotors.com]. Other parts, anyone can order them. Or you can forget new parts and buy used [google.is] like many people do in car repair to save money. Of course, it's sort of a moot point because the vast ma
Re:Right to repair laws can fix this Just think i (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. I'm all for right to repair, people actually owning things they think they've bought, and so on. That's not the same as prohibiting any sort of temporary arrangement, and many people do benefit from those kinds of arrangements depending on their situation and preferences.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm all for right to repair, people actually owning things they think they've bought, and so on. That's not the same as prohibiting any sort of temporary arrangement
Would you at least favor prohibiting companies from deliberately making non-temporary arrangements cost-prohibitive?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Right to repair laws can fix this Just think i (Score:5, Insightful)
Its not a scam (Score:2)
When its a huge company shaking you down.
Solution is really simple: Do not buy HP printers (Score:5, Insightful)
This HP is not the company it used to be a long time ago. Today, it is just another evil profit-monster that cares nothing about its customers.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I know this would be far overreaching govt., but your post made me think that a company like HP should not be allowed to keep using a once great name when they do crap like this.
The sad irony is that the once great HP became Agilent, now "Keysight", which most people would have no clue who they are or what they make. I don't own nor have used any Keysight products, but they're probably among the best you can buy.
Capitalism doesn't work as advertised. Economic theory says that HP's customers would flee and
Re: (Score:3)
Granted, it can work if you have a government that is firm in regulating and enforcing the rules (no company can be "too big to fail" when it abuses the rules), but the first thing that every
HP is a Victim of Management School Ideology (Score:5, Insightful)
HP is a textbook example of how the business school "MBA cult" has ruined American business. They have turned a once brilliant creative company like Hewlett Packard and changed it into a cheap brand name for shitty peripherals. Boeing is another excellent example of what MBA's do. Funny thing is that even when MBA's screw up, they just keep hiring clones of themselves. Notice that at Boeing they fired the one actual engineer from the board, while keeping everyone else.
Some counter-examples of successful companies that haven't followed the playbook of the MBA cult: Apple (under Steve Jobs at least), SpaceX, and Tesla (both under Elon Musk). If you truly want to "make America great again", stop hiring so many MBA's to the boards of companies.
Subjects Suck (Score:2)
Since this sounded bizarre, I looked up this "service." Apparently the idea is that you pay a subscription fee, and then HP sends you new cartridges when your current ones are running low.
Not something I'd be interested in, but it sounds like something that some people could use.
Disabling someone's printer if they cancel the service, on the other hand, is obviously shady as hell. If you stop subscribing to the service, then they should stop sending you new cartridges.
On the other hand, if this dude didn't
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Disabling someone's printer if they cancel the service, on the other hand, is obviously shady as hell. If you stop subscribing to the service, then they should stop sending you new cartridges>
More and more major software is this way- you no longer "own" your software- you're paying an ongoing fee to use it. It won't even start unless it's online and properly paid up.
I think it's horrible, but people are accepting this model, and corporations have no conscience or ethics, so why not do it with hardware?
Re: (Score:3)
They didn't disable his printer, they disabled the ink cartridge that he received under the subscription plan. When you sign up for the service, you subscribe to a certain number of pages per month. The price you pay is determined by that, and is obviously based on how long they think a cartridge will last with that usage. If he was paying $4.99/month, they he is on the '100 pages per month' plan. Maybe they figure at that rate of usage, a cartridge wlil last 3 months (for example). So in the first mon
Subscription Service? (Score:2)
Ok, I get that people get upset over ink and the printer market, and I think there is a lot of room for discussing just how big a rip off this particular 'deal' is, but I thing getting outraged at canceling a subscription to a discount program somehow not resulting in continued use of the discount product is a bit misplaced.
That is just how subscriptions and leases work.
Re:Subscription Service? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
"Canceled a random charge" ... social media outrage.
It's not surprising these days but it's still disappointing that this gets traction rather than everybody just saying "dumbass" in a Red Forman voice.
I am not going to even go find the comments saying that a basic level of ink supply should be a human right.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The ink is already in his printer. That's like cancelling your coffee of the month club and they come to your house and take away what beans you already have.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No, in the coffee of the month club you subscribed to getting a certain amount of coffee each month. In this plan, you subscribe to printing a certain number of pages in a month. You do NOT subscribe to getting a cartridge a month. In the coffee of the month club, when you stop paying you stop receiving coffee. In this plan, when you stop paying you stop being able to print pages. Exactly the same.
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously, did the guy think that the cartigates he kept getting in the mail for were complementary or somethi
HPLIP (Score:2)
The easy answer is do not buy HP printers - they are garbage anyway.
What other color printer for home use has GNU/Linux drivers as reliable as those published through HPLIP?
Clickbait headline (Score:2)
Re:Clickbait headline (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Unless he signed up for a plan that was far greater than what his actual needs were, he did not 'pay for it over time'. You get the first cartridge when you sign up for the service. If you are on the $4.99/month plan as he was, you have only paid $4.99 for the cartridge, which is not the full price of the cartridge. By the time you have paid off the cartridge, it wlil be time to get a new one, and the cycle starts over.
For it to work like you suggest, you would not receive a cartridge at all until after
Re:Clickbait headline (Score:4, Informative)
TOS *never* "clearly spell out" anything whatsoeve (Score:3)
Thar is why they are in a separate docoment from the contract, hidden away behind a link, in a tiny ugly font, on a wall of text, with the most obfiscated and underhanded wording physically possible.
You habe never read the TOS. You read the words. The meaning they will reveal to you once you are in their trap, is forever unobtainable to you. (E.g. because it is what is *not* being said. Something you could not have guessed.)
Re: (Score:2)
Not sending more ink would have been appropriate. Disabling the printer, unless it was free as part of the deal, not appropriate.
Re: (Score:3)
The thing you sign up for is the ability to print a certain number of pages in a month. You are NOT subscribing to some sort of 'cartridge of the month' service. The cartridges are just sent to enable you to do the printing you paid for. When you stop paying, you lose access to the thing you paid for, in this case - the ability to print.
The printer is not disabled, the cartridge is. He can BUY a cartridge and his printer will work.
Extortion (Score:3)
How is this not extortion?
No, don't answer that with a legal dissertation on the definition of extortion, etc. I do know how they get away with this sort of thing. It's a fundamental flaw in the way we have our laws set up in parts of the world.
Can I get ink ribbons? (Score:2)
Did he have to buy the ink cartridge/printer? (Score:2)
So, if this is all based on some subscription service, did he actually have the buy the printer and ink cartridge before being able to use them?
If I subscribe to any magazine, I don't need to spend money on a printing press first before I get the issue and can start reading it.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, you have to buy the printer. You do not buy the ink, that is what you get from the subscription.
Re: (Score:2)
Isn't this what was bound to happen? (Score:2)
It is not the company's responsibility (Score:2)
Buy Canon (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Check The Terms - and there are alternatives (Score:4, Insightful)
Almost every printer maker has some kind of subscription plan that lets them monitor your ink use and send new cartridges when needed. Or was this the "Cloud Print" service which is separate (or so you thought)? Either way, that's more intrusion and surveillance that I don't need or want. Kind of a follow-on to HP using copyright on the disabling chips in the ink cartridges to prevent refilling.
Anyway, it simply reinforces my decision to abandon HP, made many years ago. I currently have a Brother all-in-one inkjet that simply works, with ink cartridges big enough that (for black) I replace it about as often as my wife does for her laser printer, and for the same price I paid for ink in the previous HP I get at least double the number of pages. Oh yes, and the Brother has drivers for all major operating systems, including Windows from XP-10, most Mac versions within the last 10 years at least, and Linux. Unlike HP, which killed driver support for my printer when I moved to Windows 7 (XP only). Again, it just works, and the price is about the same or less than HP for a similar machine. I didn't get one of the others (Canon, Epson) at the time the HP died, but I understand that a lot of people like them too. There are alternatives to staying under HP's thumb.
Misleading Headline and Overall Non-Story (Score:2)
Despite what the headline says, the printer isn't disa
AOL coasters (Score:2)
Inkjet printers ARE A SCAM (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Unless you find it reasonable to leave your printer exposed to the internet.
To be honest, that's the only reason I would do it. I would leave the printer as a sacrificial lamb to appease the hackers when they gain access to my network. Give them something and they leave you alone right?
Seriously though, who still uses ink? Colour laser will suit most for home use and a printer needn't cost too much. Does toner have a shelf life?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
HP cloud print only $4.99/mo /use for 50 pages (Score:2)
HP cloud print only $4.99/mo /use for 50 pages (no rollover)
Site plans start at $200/mo printer 1500 pages must buy 12 mo to start with rollover
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
If you're printing letter-size or A4 photos, 10 cents a page for ink is a good deal. Inkjet photo paper costs 50 cents a sheet or more.
If you're printing text with the occasional colored graphic, it's not a good deal, and you really should be using a color laser printer.
Re: (Score:3)
Fun side story: The assistant manager of the local kinko's around 1990 quit because he had a side business. It was a mailing business for packages. Sort of like a drop point for UPS and Fed-Ex. The regional for kinko's gave him an ultimatum, "Close down your business or you're fired." Only because he had one photocopier in the shop so people could get a copy of their receipts. The regional said it was "competition" even though they never charged the customer. Now the Cliff Note:
+ Assistant Manager quit. Les
Re: (Score:2)
Electronic documents are mature enough today that there is no need to cut down trees
One still needs to perform the ecologic equivalent of cutting down trees to manufacture reading devices. There are also still rural places in Slashdot's home country where the only affordable Internet access is dial-up with its 0.05 Mbps down and 0.02 Mbps up.
Re: (Score:2)
I print a lot more than documents.
Only yesterday I produced five A3 sized photo prints.
These are in the process of being framed and will decorate the walls of my home for sometime to come.
Then there are the working drawings for the new Extension to my home. Planners and Architects and Builders work to them and not electronic ones.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh boy, that's what I needed - another self-righteous lecture on a cold Monday morning.
There's no way that you should trust any digital medium for saving something like a document. I have books >150 years old that are still perfectly readable, and will be in another 150 years. I have Word documents from last week that can't be properly rendered this week.
Re: (Score:2)