cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1962740
also from r/StallmanWasRight
// removed invalid link
Meanwhile, I’m laughing all the way to the bank with my Brother color laser.
Yes, the printer didn’t have a low subsidized price up front. But now I can enjoy big toner cartridges that seem to last forever. And I can use all the knockoff ones I want. And the printer itself is bulletproof.
Huge fan of Brother!
Funny how different the same company can appear to different people. My current printer from HP (maybe 2 or 3 years old) is the best I ever had. Sure, it offered a subscription for the ink, but after a quick calculation I knew that I would waste my money with that so I chose not to sign it. And now I have the first printer I’ve ever seen that answers “I don’t care about yellow, the text is blank and white” with “okay” and starting to print.
The article is nonsense though. They signed up for a service where HP would send free cartridges as long as they keep the monthly subcription. Of couse they can’t get a full cartridge and then just cancel the subscription…
It’s like complaining that you can’t finish watching that show on Netflix, that you downloaded to save mobile data, after you cancel your Netflix subscription.
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).
That ink is not free, because if after 6 months you cancel the trial, that ink is unusable.
If you could use if after 6 months, it would be more than 6 months of ink…?
Either you like the deal or not. You can’t be mad at it because you wanted to outsmart it but then you couldn’t.
The point is that “6 months free ink” is misleading whichever way you look at it because it’s ambiguous since ink isn’t measured in months.
Even if your reading of it would be the intended reading, then it’s still misleading because it’s just a 6 month trial for a per page subscription. Or put differently: if you surpass the monthly allocation of pages, you would have to pay, making it not free.
Given that neither the trial component nor the per page component is mentioned in the image and given the fact that the offer is ambiguous, there isn’t much to like or dislike about the deal because the deal as presented is false and non-existent.
Moreover, you conveniently sidestep all the other issues I’ve mentioned.
Like the fact that people receive cartridges with their printer that will be rendered useless with no clear warning on the box that this will happen or how to prevent this, instead they’re listed on the box in the same fashion other printer manufacturers list their cartridges that don’t get rendered useless.
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.
I’m not saying it’s a good thing… but they agreed to that. You can’t first agree to bullshit, and then complain that it’s bullshit ._.
That would be a reason to stop using anything made by HP. One should not encourage such business practice.
A slightly off-topic anecdote: At work we use ZIP drives as our daily backup. Each day of the week has an own tape cartridge. These cartdriges were made by HP. After a while of usage we got a message that would warn of data loss, if the cardridge is not replaced by a brand new one within a certain timeframe (I think it was 30 days). So there was plenty of time to get new cartridges, right? Well, it turned out that as soon as the message popped up the cartridges were not been overwritten when we inserted the cartridge of the day. We found out two weeks later when we wanted to restore some files out of that backup. After that incident we switched the manufacturer of those tape cartridges and never hat any problems since.
We then decided not to use any HP products anymore since. I wouldn’t even use a HP mouse out of principle! HP is scum.
