Expected: I cancelled our subscription with HP and they blocked us from being able to use the rest of the ink in our cartridge.

We actually moved to using Brother lasers after dealing with HP’s anti-consumer nonsense one too many times. They started to refuse to distribute offline capable installers for their drivers, so we returned the rest of our stock and swore them off.

Me too. Brother is a legend in these circles. Let's not jinx it.

Brother keep threating to bring in recognition of only one toner cartridge

Just make sure you get the older Brothers, pre-subscription model.

Yes, the printer didn’t have a low subsidized price up front.

This is brought up in every thread about printers by vigilant Brother customers roaming the internet spreading the gospel. Is there is actually any proof that HP prices are subsidized? What's to stop them from having regular margins AND subscriptions (like everyone does these days) while Brother gets away with inflated margins claiming that others are selling below cost? This way both HP and Brother win.

I don't like HP either but I find ot a bit suspicious how every time Brother is mentioned its always with the remark about how their prices are totally ok.

Yeah, me too! I have a Brother laser printer that's been sailing along now for 10 years. Recycled toner cartridges work on it and cost me very little money. I can also use recycled drums when I have to replace the drum. I don't like my real brother very much, but my Brother laser printer is the bomb.

My HP Deskjet network printer was recognized automatically by Linux Mint. I had to do nothing.

Sigh

Damn it, and I was 100% gonna vouch for Brother as a printing alternative.

They're just a company themselves. They're basically like Yelp from several generations ago... They're not a consumer protection agency so much marketing/reviews from back when it all had to be compiled on paper by hand

I think the more important question is where is the CFPB? I thought they were supposed to have teeth in preventing shit like this.

I’d be curious to know how many complaints about HP get submitted and never resolved.

You do understand what Instant Ink is, right? You're not buying cartridges, you're buying how many pages you can print. If you cancel your subscription and run out of pages to print, it no longer lets you print anything. Call me crazy but that makes sense.

This is pretty awful in the sense that it generates waste but it's also necessary for people not to abuse the system. Think about it like this, I buy 1 month of the cheapest plan, it costs me less than 1 cartridge and 1 cartridge can print more than the maximum amount of pages of my plan, I cancel said plan and keep using cartridge. Do you see how you could "game" the system to buy insanely cheap cartridges?

There's probably a better solution though. For example, they could try to come up with a way to identify people and/or printers used in the way I described before and prevent them from signing up to the service again.

Zip drives (do those things even exist anymore?) do not use tape cartridges, they are basically oversized floppies.

If you're actually using tape drives (LTO media, presumably), just step away from the damn HP software. I manage literal petabytes on tape, and LTO media comes with a lifetime warranty. Yes, even HP branded cartridges - there's only two actual manufacturers left, Fujifilm and, iirc, Sony.

Same for the drive, in fact - HP stopped producing them years ago, IBM is the only manufacturer left.

And that is not even something positive, just not a negative thing. Thats what should still be treated as the default behaviour.

Can’t speak for the article because all it leads me to is a photo disguised as a video without much context and pop-up galore.

That said, it’s a bit more nuanced that you make it out to be. HP uses some very shitty dark patterns.

Used to be that printers came with a set of starter ink cartridges.

HP nowadays uses Schrödinger’s ink called “HP Instant Ink Ready” cartridges.
If you never sign up for the HP Instant Ink subscription (incl. trials), then the cartridges that in the box will just be like the starter cartridges you’re used to.

If you however sign up for the subscription **or its ** trial, then the cartridges are changed into Instant Ink cartridges and will refuse to work once the trial is up and/or cancel the subscription.

I can see how people would expect to be able to use the cartridges that came with the printer like they always have been able to before HP pulled this nonsense.

It’s bad enough that this isn’t clearly and explicitly communicated with the customers.

What’s worse is that during setup of the printer (and in the marketing materials for the printer) customers are offered and asked if they want X months ink for free, without much indication that this is a trial for a subscription service.

Even worse that is not ink based, but per pages printed. Or to put it more bluntly: it’s a subscription that, depending on the tier chosen, gives you X amount of pages to print per month (paper needs to be provided by yourself) and HP will automatically send you ink to ensure you can print that amount of pages.

However, in all the marketing HP emphasizes ink and ink subscriptions (or “free” ink), and only after spending time looking into details can you figure out that you don’t pay for the ink, but for pages.

Here’s an example of how they market it as “6 months free ink”:

That ink is not free, because if after 6 months you cancel the trial, that ink is unusable.

Of course they can’t get a full cartridge and then just cancel the subscription

Is that so self-evident?
Classically (and HP also still has this as an option somewhere hidden away I believe) these kind of subscriptions used to be supply subscriptions.

For X amount a month we’ll send you Y amount of supply and it was yours to keep and do as you see fit, nowadays it’s often marketed as “auto-ship” across many web shops and comes with a marginal discount, but there are also plenty of examples that just call it a subscription (e.g. razor blade subscriptions).

The problem I have with it is that HP also bricks third party ink. Basically they bought a printer that's useless without a subscription fee. I don't think that's right.

The point is how shitty it is to have a subscription for ink on the first place.

And if you do have one (it might make sense for businesses and such), then it should be set up so that yes, you can use all the ink, to cut down the waste.

Besides it's known that HP uses enough dark patterns that people aren't sure what they're signing up for.

And just check what community you're in :p

Also, how tf are those cartridges free? This is exactly the kind of bullshit language companies like that want you to use.

Also also yes, DRM is fucking cancer too. Way to give an example.

If I subscribe to a magazine they don't take the last magazine away when I cancel. This is a physical product, not an online product like Netflix.

I mean I'm pretty sure if you cancel your Netflix subscription it still finishes the current billing period and just doesn't renew so you can finish watching that show.

And that’s why I pirate.