HP's 'free ink for life' plan is over because some scams are legal

[Jet_ski]

Summary

HP recently informed Instant Ink plan customers that after just three years, it was ending its "free ink for life" deal, according to Consumer Reports. It becomes not-so-free as of Friday.

 

What was this deal? The company remotely monitored printer buyers' ink usage, and sent a "free" cartridge when they were running low...with some caveats.

 

Printing (and ink) was not unlimited. Users were allowed to print 15 pages per month. Subscribers also had to have a credit card on file with HP. If you went over 15 pages, HP would charge you a dollar for 10 additional pages.

 

But now those halcyon days are gone. HP will charge participants in the program 99 cents per month for their 15 pages. Sure, nearly $12 a year doesn't sound like a lot, but, again, they signed up for FREE ink for life.

 

There are tiers that cost between 99 cents to $24.99/month for more pages, based on your printing needs. One positive change to the plan is that you can roll over your unused pages up to a cap.

 

The bait-and-switch "free ink for life" deal is just the latest trick scam pulled by HP (and other printer companies) to make as much money as possible from their machines.

 

Quotes

Quote

Every five pages, HP would PRINT AN AD on your printer. Don't worry, the ad wouldn't count against your quota.

Quote

Writer Cory Doctorow broke down how HP has milked its customers dry with “security chips” in ink cartridges that stop your printer from working if you try to use (cheaper) ink from a third party.

 

My thoughts

Long time ago I decided to never purchase HP products. And this just cements my views of the company.

 

Inkjets printers are a scam to begin with. Because they tempt you with a low upfront cost but over the lifetime they cost 5x more because getting new cartridges cost as much as the printer. And if you don’t use an inkjet printer frequently, the ink dries inside the device and you have to throw it away.

 

If you must just buy a laser printer. It costs more upfront but they actually have a lower cost of ownership over the life of the device.

 

When my second $500 HP printer scanner stopped working with less than 2 years of light use, I decided to get a Xerox laser printer. Now 7 years later, the laser printer still works like new. I only had to replace the black film once and I’ve printed thousands of pages.

 

Sources

https://mashable.com/article/hp-ends-free-ink-for-life/
 

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

[minibois]

Printers in general are a scam, but this one sounds even worse than most.

How far have we as humanity fallen, to make placing some ink on paper so difficult.

 

So expensive for no reason and it just does not work. These printers smell fear and just won't print (or scan) when they feel like you need them the most.

 

As humanity we should move away from paper in general, especially because we use so much cardboard in general for product packaging.

[Godlygamer23]

8 minutes ago, minibois said:

Printers in general are a scam, but this one sounds even worse than most.

How far have we as humanity fallen, to make placing some ink on paper so difficult.

 

So expensive for no reason and it just does not work. These printers smell fear and just won't print (or scan) when they feel like you need them the most.

 

As humanity we should move away from paper in general, especially because we use so much cardboard in general for product packaging.

I have an HP printer that I received for free, and it doesn't have any yellow ink, and it literally won't let me print at all, even in gray scale, because it's out of yellow ink. Pretty frustrating. Selecting specifically gray scale in the printer settings does nothing as well. It's really frustrating because it makes people spend more money than they might need to. 

[Senzelian]

Printers... I remember those! They were a thing in the 90s right? 

[poochyena]

The ink printer industry is truly bizarre.

Just stick with laser or thermal printers.

[Bombastinator]

My solution was to never use an ink jet of any kind for printing.  I don’t have to do photo stuff though so that’s a bit easier.  I understand inkjet is still the only way if one wants good color accuracy.  Laser printer and make sure the drum is refillable.

[Spotty]

18 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

I have an HP printer that I received for free, and it doesn't have any yellow ink, and it literally won't let me print at all, even in gray scale, because it's out of yellow ink. Pretty frustrating. Selecting specifically gray scale in the printer settings does nothing as well. It's really frustrating because it makes people spend more money than they might need to. 

I think everyone can relate to this.

 

[Letgomyleghoe]

25 minutes ago, poochyena said:

Just stick with laser or thermal printers.

even those are fucked, the toner cartridges are insanely expensive, for laser, and run out in a heartbeat. Also, as the toner runs out the image quality gets worse and worse, until it's just washed out.

[Gamer Schnitzel]

41 minutes ago, minibois said:

Printers in general are a scam, but this one sounds even worse than most.

How far have we as humanity fallen, to make placing some ink on paper so difficult.

 

So expensive for no reason and it just does not work. These printers smell fear and just won't print (or scan) when they feel like you need them the most.

 

As humanity we should move away from paper in general, especially because we use so much cardboard in general for product packaging.

I never understand why anyone even uses paper. I essentially never ever use paper, not at work, not at home, nowhere. What do people still use paper for? Even students these days use laptops, don't they? Blows my mind.

[bcredeur97]

Easy solution: stop printing? Avoid it all costs. It costs a lot. 

They are literally milking people for trying to do things in old ways. 

Print to PDF is your friend.

[Kazlehoff]

13 minutes ago, Letgomyleghoe said:

even those are fucked, the toner cartridges are insanely expensive, for laser, and run out in a heartbeat. Also, as the toner runs out the image quality gets worse and worse, until it's just washed out.

I... disagree. you've apparently had some terrible laser printers.

I have a Brother DCP-:2540DW that i got on boxing day, like 5 years ago. the half full starter toner cartridge lasted me 3 of those 5 years. the new, aftermarket, high cap cartridge (which my printer accepted without any kind of complaint), after two years, still shows at 90% full.

when the starter cart ran out (and yes, after shaking it and resetting it and stuff, to get the extra toner out (which to my printers credit, yielded a couple extra pages, so its not set to only use half the cart) the last page it printed looked as good as the first.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

27 minutes ago, Spotty said:

I think everyone can relate to this.

 

Here's an animated version for your viewing pleasure.

[WhitetailAni]

We use HP Instant Ink with our HP OfficeJet Pro 6968 (CMYK, not CYMRGBK or whatever it is) and have the 500-pages-a-month plan.

15 pages a month?

Naw.
15 pages a day.

 

elephants

[Nayr438]

The is the first I am hearing of this and I am on the HP Instant Free Ink thing.

I require a printer for work but average less than 15 pages a month. Even at 99 cents a month, I still find that rather reasonable.

15 Pages a month at 99 cents with up to 45 page rollover, or the local Office Depot for $50 cents a page. I will take the 99 cents option if needed.

 

Quote

Oh, another fun component of the plan: Every five pages, HP would PRINT AN AD on your printer. Don't worry, the ad wouldn't count against your quota. Phew!

I have never received a printed ad...

 

I also did a quick search on this and came across this posted by a HP Support Agent.

Quote

Yes, you are right. The 15-page free plan will no longer be available depending on your region. Kindly contact the HP Instant Ink team for more info on the changes and price for this plan. The contact information for the team can be found on the home page of Instant Ink. Click here.

So it doesn't seem to be ending everywhere, just in certain Regions. I can't seem to find a list of these Regions however.

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/HP-Instant-Ink/Instant-Ink-free-plan-ending/m-p/7823294/highlight/true#M13281

[Donut417]

If we ever need a new printer, I dont give a shit about what my mom wants. We will go laser. Ink is just too expensive. If she wants to print pictures there is always Walmart, Walgreens or CVS that can do it for her. 

[miagisan]

1 hour ago, Gamer Schnitzel said:

I never understand why anyone even uses paper. I essentially never ever use paper, not at work, not at home, nowhere. What do people still use paper for? Even students these days use laptops, don't they? Blows my mind.

Some of us deal in business which need legally stamped and notarized documentation and drawings.  

[Vishera]

Don't you find the fact that HP has access to a device on your network worrying?

Also subscriptions suck,the Ink of Canon may cost more than the printer itself but at least i can use it without a stupid 15 pages per month limit.

[Donut417]

1 hour ago, Gamer Schnitzel said:

I never understand why anyone even uses paper. I essentially never ever use paper, not at work, not at home, nowhere. What do people still use paper for? Even students these days use laptops, don't they? Blows my mind.

Im a warehouse associate. I pick and pack orders. Unlike Amazon and other companies we are VERY analog. We pick orders off of a paper ticket. Min of 2 pages per order. Essential a warehouse copy and customer copy. We our HQ replenishes our warehouse with product, a multi page document on a Dot Matrix printer prints off what we should be expecting on that delivery, generally 30 pallets. Our inbound lead has to physically check every box and amount and match it to that list. No scanners are used at all. For reference we did like 202 orders last Friday, orders range from 1 pound to several hundred. Not to mention truck orders that can be several hundred or even thousand pounds. We literally go thru a forest everyday with the amount of paper we use. 

[Vishera]

5 minutes ago, miagisan said:

Some of us deal in business which need legally stamped and notarized documentation and drawings.  

In the legal and business worlds paper is a necessity.

If it's folders of evidence and records or folders of business plans

[Godlygamer23]

2 hours ago, Gamer Schnitzel said:

I never understand why anyone even uses paper. I essentially never ever use paper, not at work, not at home, nowhere. What do people still use paper for? Even students these days use laptops, don't they? Blows my mind.

My workplace still requires paper copies of everything. Most of what we do right now still involves paper, although we are trying to phase it out. 

[Trik'Stari]

2 hours ago, minibois said:

Printers in general are a scam, but this one sounds even worse than most.

How far have we as humanity fallen, to make placing some ink on paper so difficult.

 

So expensive for no reason and it just does not work. These printers smell fear and just won't print (or scan) when they feel like you need them the most.

 

As humanity we should move away from paper in general, especially because we use so much cardboard in general for product packaging.

At this point, going back to the printing press would be preferable to actual modern printers.

 

We have a bunch of different ones at work, ALL of them are pains in the ass for no real reason. Especially the networked printers.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

"Printer as a service", the latest example of "shit that isn't a service as a service" greatness!

 

1 hour ago, bcredeur97 said:

Print to PDF is your friend.

How? Stuff on my screen before "Print to PDF" becomes stuff on my screen after "Print to PDF", not on paper. Especially when printing PDFs, "Print to PDF" is mostly useless.

 

23 minutes ago, miagisan said:

Some of us deal in business which need legally stamped and notarized documentation and drawings.  

And some of us read. Like longe-than-a-wiki-page read. And make annotations right on what we read. I've seen people do this on tablets or other touchscreens with "e-pens". It's a mystery to me. Maybe one day we'll have a kind of iPad-Kindle crossover with an e-ink screen and a pen, at high enough resolution, maybe then the days of printed working papers and journal articles will be over for me.

Until then, no, stuff on a monitor is not a good substitute.

For my needs, monochrome laser is all I need, though. And then even with HP (and generic toner) I've been fine.

[Bombastinator]

2 hours ago, Gamer Schnitzel said:

I never understand why anyone even uses paper. I essentially never ever use paper, not at work, not at home, nowhere. What do people still use paper for? Even students these days use laptops, don't they? Blows my mind.

Paper has occasional weird advantages.  It’s analog. It’s extremely hard to alter or forge for one thing.  There are other situationally specific things as well.  The paperless office has become a thing in some sectors, but not all of them.  

[Bombastinator]

3 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

"Printer as a service", the latest example of "shit that isn't a service as a service" greatness!

 

How? Stuff on my screen before "Print to PDF" becomes stuff on my screen after "Print to PDF", not on paper. Especially when printing PDFs, "Print to PDF" is mostly useless.

 

And some of us read. Like longe-than-a-wiki-page read. And make annotations right on what we read. I've seen people do this on tablets or other touchscreens with "e-pens". It's a mystery to me. Maybe one day we'll have a kind of iPad-Kindle crossover with an e-ink screen and a pen, at high enough resolution, maybe then the days of printed working papers and journal articles will be over for me.

Until then, no, stuff on a monitor is not a good substitute.

For my needs, monochrome laser is all I need, though. And then even with HP (and generic toner) I've been fine.

This already exists... sort of.  The pen on the microsoft surface is for almost exactly what you describe.  The problem with such things is they only work in specific situations. If you were to open an electronic version of a journal you would have to open it in a program that allows markup, the marked up document would have to be saved as a different type of document that it came in as, etc.. standard computer file format shenanigans.  Paper is analog.  It’s format free.  Effectively a universal standard.

[SpaceGhostC2C]

Just now, Bombastinator said:

This already exists... sort of.  The pen on the microsoft surface is for almost exactly what you describe. 

As far as I'm aware, the Microsoft Surface uses just another light-emitting screen, at which point many tablets already do the same, but not what it would take to away from paper.