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HP Printer Businesses

HP Exec Says Quiet Part Out Loud When It Comes To Locking in Print Customers (theregister.com) 86

HP is squeezing more margin out of print customers, the result of a multi-year strategy to convert unprofitable business into something more lucrative, and says its subscription model is "locking" in people. From a report: Tech vendors -- software, hardware, and cloud services -- generally avoid terms that suggest they're perhaps in some way pinning down customers in a strategic sales hold. But as Marie Myers, chief financial officer at HP, was this week talking to the UBS Global Technology conference, in front of investors, the thrust of the message was geared toward the audience. "We absolutely see when you move a customer from that pure transactional model ... whether it's Instant Ink, plus adding on that paper, we sort of see a 20 percent uplift on the value of that customer because you're locking that person, committing to a longer-term relationship."

Instant Ink is a subscription in which ink or toner cartridges are dispatched when needed, with customers paying for plans that start at $0.99 and run to $25.99 per month. As of May last year, HP had more than 11 million subscribers to the service. Since then it has banked double-digit percentage figures on the revenues front. By pre-pandemic 2019, HP had grown weary of third-party cartridge makers stealing its supplies business. It pledged to charge more upfront for certain printer hardware ("rebalance the system profitability, capturing more profit upfront").

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HP Exec Says Quiet Part Out Loud When It Comes To Locking in Print Customers

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  • Two things (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Monday December 04, 2023 @04:29PM (#64054385)

    Selling someone a product and then relying on sunk cost fallacy to let you get away with raping them on supplies for said product should be illegal.

    Taking it further by adding arbitrary technology to a product specifically to lock out 3rd party supplies for it? That ought to get you thrown in a dark pit somewhere.

    • by Sique ( 173459 )
      I have to admit, I print with an HP... an old HP 4050TN. It still works. You can still get spares, and its prints are just nice. Only problem? Its 100 MBit/sec Ethernet interface. You can't plug it into many of the recent switches which don't have built in copper ports but rely on SFPs for copper connections. Those interfaces simply don't work at 100 Mbit/sec and want 1 GBit/sec. You have to buy a cheap switch as a converter.
      • Re:Two things (Score:4, Insightful)

        by war4peace ( 1628283 ) on Monday December 04, 2023 @05:12PM (#64054513)

        Um... most switches these days are RJ45.
        Your problem is one you have created yourself.

      • by jsonn ( 792303 )
        Most Gigabit Copper Ethernet SFP modules are perfectly happy to negotiate 100base as well. It's fiber modules that tend to be a lot more picky. Also, the majority of modern switches still uses RJ45 for the majority of the ports, both for cost and energy efficiency reasons.
      • by Revek ( 133289 )
        I have a couple of ethernet only printers left. I used a cheap tp-link extender as a bridge for them. It doesn't show up as a wireless printer at all. No need to over think it.
      • by EvilSS ( 557649 )
        Wow, that's a lot to unpack. First off, why are you plugging endpoint devices into a SFP switch? Those tend to be for servers using fiber/DAC connections, core switches, or aggregation switches. 'RJ45' SFP modules are hot and power-hungry little buggers. Many switches don't even support filling all of their SFP ports with them because of that. Second, you certainly can get 100mb/s SFP adapters (as a matter of fact, I have one in my desk drawer right now), and there are switches that support them. Just the o
        • by Sique ( 173459 )
          Current problem at a customer site: Some Cisco FEX N2K C2248TP died, and Cisco has problems with spares. They offered us refurbished N9K C93180YC-FX3 instead, which can be operated in FEX mode (the -FX and the -FX2 can't). But the copper SPFs in the 93180YC have some issues. 100 MBit/sec links tend to fail.
      • by r1348 ( 2567295 )

        A problem that is literally fixable with $10-15 is not a problem.

        • A problem that is literally fixable with $10-15 is not a problem.

          Worse. A problem that affects only one person on this planet is not a problem. I guarantee virtually no one is using this old small-office printer on a high end switch SFP only switch, other than the OP of course.

          • by MinusOne ( 4145 )

            I also have an HP 4050, I was able to get the gigabit ethernet EIO module for it and it works great.

    • Re:Two things (Score:4, Informative)

      by Darinbob ( 1142669 ) on Monday December 04, 2023 @05:28PM (#64054585)

      And also I saw an advertisement just this weak for printer (Epson?) that lets you refill ink cheaply. It's really sad that HP has become a company that essentially does nothing whatsoever except strongarm customers into buying overpriced ink. Why do customers still buy HP?

      Personally, I don't care, I don't own a personal printer and likely never will. But I still hate seeing corporate scumbags.

      • Itâ(TM)s all Carly Fiorinaâ(TM)s fault

        • After which she positioned herself in Republican party trying to be an expert on business and economics, then tried to run for California senate - all possibly a plan to screw up the country the same way she screwed up HP. But ultimately bad at business and bad at politics. A common CEO problem where their ego gets ahead of them and they lose sight of how little actual "work" they do.

      • by nasch ( 598556 )

        Why do customers still buy HP?

        My guess is because they're not even 1% as tuned in to tech news and trends as you are, and they only thing they know about HP is it's a familiar name.

    • by jvkjvk ( 102057 )

      >Selling someone a product and then relying on sunk cost fallacy to let you get away with raping them on supplies for said product should be illegal.

      Why? It's just a business model. Consumers can go somewhere else if they don't like the costs of using their shiny toys. Perhaps a per 1000 page cost or something for printers would be nice, but you can find that info yourself.

      Are you suggesting that people be protected from themselves in this area? How far do you want to go with regulating businesses in thi

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • by nasch ( 598556 )

        Companies should be allowed to set whatever prices they want (not getting into the problems of whether regulation of the market is currently sufficient to ensure robust competition, that's a whole other issue), but I wouldn't mind regulations prohibiting locking out third party supplies.

  • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Monday December 04, 2023 @04:33PM (#64054395)

    She says that, everyone looked at her with that surprised Pikachu face and she goes "What? Oh, sorry, was there anyone who didn't know that yet?"

    Every time I read something like that, I feel like accepting the challenge and figuring out a way to thwart their lock-in, it sounds like a nice game and a reason to play with my logic analyzer some more... but for that I'd have to buy some HP crap, and I don't want to do that.

    • She says that, everyone looked at her with that surprised Pikachu face and she goes "What? Oh, sorry, was there anyone who didn't know that yet?"

      From the story

      But as Marie Myers, chief financial officer at HP, was this week talking to the UBS Global Technology conference, in front of investors, the thrust of the message was geared toward the audience.

      The audience was likely fucking cheering her as a goddamn hero. Investors want your fucking money and if someone says they'll slit the public's throat and rob them blind to an investor, and the investors are getting a good ROI, they'll fall all over themselves trying to get a bigger knife in the murderer's hands.

      There are zero people in the HP pipeline that view the squeezing the public for every dollar they have and locking them into shit contracts as a BAD thing. Pretty much all of them ar

  • Two Words (Score:5, Informative)

    by Valgrus Thunderaxe ( 8769977 ) on Monday December 04, 2023 @04:33PM (#64054397)
    Brother Laser
    • Re:Two Words (Score:5, Informative)

      by HBI ( 10338492 ) on Monday December 04, 2023 @04:37PM (#64054417)

      Yeah. The last HP printer was about 12 years ago. I avoid the name like the plague.

      Enshitification long before the word was coined.

    • by Anonymous Coward
      I stayed with HP for many years because I was always able to get ink/toner for old printers. Other brands of printer often become difficult/impossible to get ink/toner after they got too old. But now I have a Brother Laser and it is quite nice, and with their current attitude, HP can go fuck themself.
      • by taustin ( 171655 )

        HP can go fuck themself.

        I believe that is their ultimate goal, but they want to practice on you and me first to make sure they're proficient. Practice makes perfect!

    • Re:Two Words (Score:4, Interesting)

      by DesScorp ( 410532 ) on Monday December 04, 2023 @04:58PM (#64054483) Journal

      Brother Laser

      Finally got my parents to go to a laser printer when I showed them the cost per page of a monochrome laser vs the cost per page of inkjet. With inflation biting people so badly, now is a particularly good time to make the case to switch.

      • Re:Two Words (Score:5, Interesting)

        by jsonn ( 792303 ) on Monday December 04, 2023 @05:24PM (#64054569)
        Ironically, inkjets are cheaper per page if (1) you print enough and (2) you are using a tank printer. But if you don't print a couple of pages a day on average, the cost per page doesn't matter at all and you are unlikely to print enough to avoid regular head cleaning.
        • Yep also Inkjets have a place for colour accurate prints, higher quality prints, and larger format printers.

          Just because it doesn't suit the average joe's home office desk doesn't mean the technology is pointless.

        • by mjwx ( 966435 )

          Ironically, inkjets are cheaper per page if (1) you print enough and (2) you are using a tank printer. But if you don't print a couple of pages a day on average, the cost per page doesn't matter at all and you are unlikely to print enough to avoid regular head cleaning.

          I suspect like most people, I print so infrequently that by the time the cheap inkjet I bought a few years back is complaining about ink, it's cheaper just to buy a new £25 printer.

          I still avoid HP, in all it's forms. Never used one that worked properly from printers to servers. I'd hate to think how bad their consulting services are.

      • I got a color Brother Laser printer for Christmas several years ago, a $500 printer and Black Friday deal for under $300. Wasn't going to limit myself to a black only printer !!! Great printer !!
    • YES!
      I own one, it's great.

    • by antdude ( 79039 )

      The color all in one (with fax -- yes, still used) ones are expensive!

      • by nasch ( 598556 )

        I would guess most people don't need a color printer. For the occasional photo printing, there are plenty of services that are pretty cheap.

    • by taustin ( 171655 )

      Kyocera leased. The lease (which includes toner - and maintenance and repair) costs about as much as the toner would if we bought, making the hardware essentially free (and longer lasting than if we had to pay for repairs).

    • Yep. Gave up on HP inkjet printers and their bloatware.

      Brother.

    • Brother Laser

      I prefer Granny Dot Matrix [fandom.com]

  • by NormalVisual ( 565491 ) on Monday December 04, 2023 @04:35PM (#64054409)

    This kind of thing is why you haven't been on my list of options for printers anymore, nor will I recommend you unless it's absolutely unavoidable. I miss the old days, where HP produced solid products that worked really well, lasted, and didn't bend you over on consumables. Well, not as badly, anyway.

    • Re:Good job, HP (Score:4, Informative)

      by nucrash ( 549705 ) on Monday December 04, 2023 @04:52PM (#64054463)

      Welcome to the Jack Welch school of business. Where profit is the key focus, cutting costs, locking in customers seem to be the only tools available, and anything that would retain a loyal customer base to improve the customer experience, especially anything that might increase the value,quality, usefulness of the product is soundly rejected as too expensive to implement.

      That's the American C-Suite think right there.

    • Bingo. All of our laser printers aren't HP for this reason alone.
  • by RogueWarrior65 ( 678876 ) on Monday December 04, 2023 @04:40PM (#64054425)

    That person should be tarred and feathered. It's much worse than war, pandemics, crime, inflation, or climate change. One could argue that it exacerbates all of these.

    • by HBI ( 10338492 )

      Remember that companies today have no interest in actually running a long term profitable business. The objective is to get windfall capital infusions, and what better way than extracting maximum value out of your remaining customers until they finally jump ship? After all, you already got your financial rewards.

    • Well, we have "IStore" and "I everything".

  • Who are all these people who still print anything at all? I haven't had a functioning printer at home in at least a decade. Most of the time you don't even have to print return labels any more (one more reason Amazon is winning...)

    • *raises hand as a landlord

      Gotta' make copies too. :-(

      Court docs, legal compliance for notifications, it's easier for going over a lease and getting initials/signatures to flip through, etc.

      Property taxes still wants checks, so printing those addresses/envelopes, although I believe state law is requiring that to change but cheaper than card service fees.

      And the biggest one, taxes. Free file doesn't include the forms I need. :-( So cheaper and easier to just print the pages.

  • Funny how many companies think they "own" their customers and take liberties accordingly.
  • I haven't had an HP Printer in 8 or so years. Just bought an Epson. I stay away from their laptops, If they are embracing that as a company then I won't encourage bad behavior.

    • by jonwil ( 467024 )

      I have never owned a HP product and I never will and I will do everything possible to steer others away from buying HP products.

  • I used to have one of those gigantic old HP ColorLaserJet printers. I got it for nothing because it was taking up too much room in the office. It gave me years and years of excellent, trouble free performance. Toner came in large bottles, and was cheap. When the old monster finally died, I got incredibly lucky. I was looking for another HP, because it had been so reliable. Instead, I wound up with a Brother 3140 colour laser printer "because half price sale". So I dodged the HP lock-in bullet, and I'

  • I guess there is a sucker born every minute. By now everybody should know they are not people you buy printers from unless you want to use them as paperweights.

  • Anti-monopoly laws (Score:4, Informative)

    by NotEmmanuelGoldstein ( 6423622 ) on Monday December 04, 2023 @06:14PM (#64054723)

    ... locking that person ...

    This is why we have anti-monopoly laws, or did until copyright laws included DRM hardware/software. Now vendor lock-in is easy, put some IP in the product and 'protect' it so the customer doesn't have a choice.

    Plus, there is HP, Apple and John Deere openly discriminating against non-genuine parts: Clearly anti-competitive behaviour that no country has objected to.

    • There's no anti-monopoly laws. Monopolies aren't illegal. There are anti-trust laws which concern themselves with abuse of market power (what you do with your monopoly position may be illegal). But even then HP is not in a position of market power to fall afoul of any of these laws and there are multiple competitors to HP end users can trivially choose.

  • Onto windows computers that don't even have HP hardware [slashdot.org]? This has antitrust shenanigans written all over it.
    • Onto windows computers that don't even have HP hardware [slashdot.org]?

      No one gets locked into anything due to their printer name changing.

      This has antitrust shenanigans written all over it.

      No it doesn't, HP woefully lacks any kind of market power to fall afoul of antitrust laws. People need to stop quoting laws they don't understand.

  • Don't but anything HP. Ever. They are the worst of the worst. I can't wait to see them file for bankruptcy. I can hope...
  • Epson ET 8500 (Score:4, Informative)

    by JackAxe ( 689361 ) on Monday December 04, 2023 @07:07PM (#64054841)
    I bought this printer in January of 2021. I use it every week. Some weeks I print dozens of 8x11 full bleed photos, or whatever design/art project I'm working on. Other weeks just a print test to keep it healthy.

    Coming up on almost 2 years and I still have more than half the provided ink left in the tanks. I still have ink left in the bottles that I know from YouTube videos I can use. I bought an extra set of ink at purchase, but I don't think I'll be opening them up for another 3 to 5 years.

    This is the first ink printer I've owned, where I have way more ink to print, than I have paper to print on; I bought up all the ink jet paper from local Good Wills and Thrift stores, so I have a file cabinet of paper ranging from premium photo to fancy fine art..

    I Also own a Bother Laser Printer from 2004. Only replaced the toner once since then and have a spare waiting to go in the future.

    Why anyone would buy an HP, other than ignorance, is beyond me.
    • Hah! Great purchase! I got the 8550, among other reasons for Epson's legendary Linux support (Canon sucks with Linux, HP was great, they supported CUPS, until Apple took it, but now here were are) and my wife uses it loads as a teacher for school, and we both use it for photos and stuff.

      I've yet to refill it, after a year and then some. Black is below 25%, all other colours are still closer to 50%. My next project: A4 photo albums. I've done an A5 album, using Epson matte archival paper. Gorgeous. An A3 p

  • by jenningsthecat ( 1525947 ) on Monday December 04, 2023 @09:43PM (#64055213)

    "We absolutely see when you move a customer from that pure transactional model ... whether it's Instant Ink, plus adding on that paper, we sort of see a 20 percent uplift on the value of that customer because you're locking that person, committing to a longer-term relationship."

    This is what happens when we let bottom feeders move to the top of the food chain. What more proof does anybody need that these people are scum-sucking sociopaths who need to be regulated into behaving responsibly for the common good of society? Man, if only I held the button that ended all these fuckers, I couldn't press it fast enough. Fuck HP with a chainsaw sideways.

    • What more proof does anybody need that these people are scum-sucking sociopaths who need to be regulated into behaving responsibly for the common good of society?

      Really? This *IS* America.This is EXACTLY what the laws were written to create. I am sorry if your childhood understanding of being patriotic to the USA fooled you. *shrug*

      I dislike seeing the 'reveal' for the first time on people who truely believed America was the Land of the Free. It is the Land of the Dollar and absolute and complete control. There will be no ovens this time. You will die from exposure, starvation, and lack of access to clean water.

      Why do you think we keep finding out about these super-

  • "By pre-pandemic 2019, HP had grown weary of third-party cartridge makers stealing its supplies business" Ironically some people would call that free market competition. And its not stealing, if you can do it more effectively then HP and still make profit out of it. This lock in is nothing more then company establishing illegal monopoly, there no good reason do this and is definitely anti consumer practise.
  • ...I will never purchase any HP printer for my personal use.
    And if I were to ever again spec a business printer for a client I'd look for any reasonable HP alternative.
  • What the fuck does this mean?

    "it has banked double-digit percentage figures on the revenues front. "
  • I figured a long time ago that owning a printer was 99% useless. Being into graphics, technical diagrams, writing math papers in LaTeX, I thought that being able to print out stuff would be useful, but I don't do it often enough. Ink cartridges, overpriced or not, dry out! I found it was cheaper to take a USB memory stick to a nearby Office Max, Staples, or whatever shipping store I lived near, pay to have them print it out, and also I get a bit of exercise walking there and back. I can't imagine ever

  • I dumped HP printers a long time ago. I switched to Epson printers. I buy LD Ink off of amazon at a really cheap price. It works well in my Epson printers and costs far less than official Epson ink. Never had problems with their ink so far.
  • When they treat their customers this way, imagine how they treat their workers.

  • Just another example of how the tech industry has grown up and become just like every other industry -- run by greedy corporate sociopaths.

    I'm old enough to remember the young-ish (call it the 20-something) tech industry of 30 years ago. Back then, HP -- and all tech companies -- built products that wowed their customers. Or should I say wooed their customers -- 'cause that's what the tech industry used to do. It used to seek to win customers over with amazing products; to use technology to make its cust
  • Looks like Qualityland (by Marc-Uwe Kling recommended read!) is the goal on the road these execs are on: in that story, people don't need to order stuff, because the system knows better than they themselves what they want and gets it for them and to them, by drone, and to accept the delivery, they don't use their fingerprint on the screen pad of the drone, but have to kiss it instead. You see, the lips are just as unique as the fingerprints, but market research has found that the lip print improves on the c

Think of it! With VLSI we can pack 100 ENIACs in 1 sq. cm.!

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