HP executive boasts that its controversial ink subscription model is "locking" in customers
HP executive boasts that its controversial ink subscription model is "locking" in customers
As reported by The Reg, HP chief financial officer Marie Myers was talking to investors at the UBS Global Technology conference about the tech giant's subscription model.
HP executive boasts that its controversial ink subscription model is "locking" in customers::undefined
The time for regulating these evil business practices out of existence is now. It’s clear they won’t do the right thing out of moral obligation, so they need to be made an example.
Or, and bear with me here, consumers could wake up and not purchase garbage?
It's been plain for a solid decade+ that consumer inkjets are garbage and money pits. If people keep buying, why should HP stop selling?
Comes down to a basic question, "Does the government owe it to you to not hurt yourself?" Meh, sometimes yes, sometimes no. Crazy complex for a simple question, ain't it?
But if one can't be assed to take 5-minutes of research before purchasing a printer, seeing how fucked up HP and inkjets are, I can't help them, and it ain't the government's business to stop them.
Consumer protection from predatory practices is literally "government business".
What a horribly naive and flawed perspective.
“If people aren’t smart enough to avoid murderers and not get murdered, I can’t help them, and it ain’t the government’s business to stop murders.”
- You probably
Yeah, gambling, then lootboxes demonstrated citizens need to be protected from dark patterns. And their use by government officials (say by the George W. Bush administration) should be felonious.
At the very least, no product (printer ink) should be legal to sell at a 2000% markup. Or design cartridges where you can't use up all the ink.
No, that time was about a century ago when the Great Depression hit and USSR was trying their hand at an alternative.
Our oligarchs, instead, thought the Austrian fellow had it going on.
While I don't disagree, there is also something to be said for being a savvy consumer. Stop buying their shit. Do your research. If people spent as much time researching their decisions as lamenting them, they'd be happier with their purchases overall.
I haven't paid for printer ink in over 10 years. I'm still on my starter cartridge for the laser printer I purchased that far back.
I’m in the same boat with my laser printer that I bought in 2014, but I still think we need new laws prohibiting predatory practices. Similarly, I’m savvy enough to successfully avoid scam calls, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think we need more regulation and harsher punishments for those people making scam phone calls.
Modern civilized society shouldn’t require everyone to be aware of all the new technological advancements that can hurt them. Our govt should be responsible enough to effectively legislate and punish the offenders, and we should not resort to victim blaming in the absence of such legislation.
Laughs in Brother laser printer ownership
I bought a Brother LH-23200 monochrome laser printer in 2016. The only times it has failed to print it's either been out of paper or the toner ran out. The toner lasts forever. And a box of four toner cartridges costs $26. It's the Toyota Hilux of printers.
I just switched to an old Dell LaserJet printer. Threw away my HP Inkjet MFP after they pushed a software update to lock out third party ink. I refuse to pay this stupid game.
Ignoring the disgusting mentality of leadership for the moment:
These are actually probably what the vast majority of home printer users (and a lot of small office printers) would want. The main drawback of ink based printers is that they dry out (and the rollers get dirty). But if you are printing even a few sheets a month, you get around that. And buying small amounts of ink makes sense for anything short of a medium/large office that is printing large numbers of documents per day. Get a new 100 pages worth of ink every other month and recycle the cartridges. Carbon footprint largely becomes noise since the postal trucks are going anyway.
Which is where toner comes into play. Laser/toner printers are awesome. They "never" dry out, tend to be enclosed enough that the rollers are protected, and are fairly cheap to restock if you buy large enough cartridges (and have a printer from the past decade or so). But laser printers are actually HORRIBLE for home use (and the environment) since they are basically aerosolized microplastics. And the cost argument starts getting messy for home users, but that is a huge rabbit hole.
The reality is that people need to realize that their local library have printers and they just need to bring a thumb drive and a buck. But... I am also the kind of person who has a laser printer next to his 3d printer (that room is fucked anyway).
i switched from a subscription HP inkjet to a nice brother color laser. the photos are i guess a bit worse quality, as they say, but it's so worth the tradeoff. it's built like a tank, is less bad at randomly not connecting to the computer, and i can just print what i want and it does it. i'm not sitting in the print menu thinking 'hmm if i print this as color, that's only 4 color pages left on the month, then they'll charge me $1 for the next allotment'
and it's just so fucking tiresome, and you just get bogged down in this pure banality and it's so insane. like, the printer and ink are sitting right there in my house! why am i thinking like this??
I haven't owned an inkjet in 20 years. I will never own one again.
It's worth the extra money for laser. I just replaced my 1996 laser printer. I don't remember ever replacing the toner.
Oh, and it was smaller than most printers you can buy today.
Took an old HP laser from my last job. It's tiny and can't seem to break. Using it now for WFH where I have to print plenty of shipping labels.
Spent $60 of company money on 4x toner cartridges. Seems like cheating. I'm shocked when one actually runs out, can never remember where I stashed the spares. 1,500+ pages from one cartridge? Like I care.
(The wifi is a pain, interferes with (more noise) other shit and seemingly can't be killed. "Hey Google, turn on/off the printer." Small annoyance.)
I fucked up once and bought a HP printer. It won’t happen again.
Just remember this simple saying: “HP printers, no thank you”
Boasting about being evil. Nice.
Locking in customers is a sane, normal business practice. Sell razors cheap, get 'em on razor blades. One would hope said business provides a solid product, but what if they don't?
If consumers, after a decade or two, can't recognize how stupid inkjet tech is, what a money-hole it is, and what a clusterfuck HP is, why should HP act differently? 5-minutes of Googling would solve this issue for consumers.
"Buy a Brother laser." And we're done here.
Anyone who has one of these should be buying a Brother laserjet.
Hey, HP... 🖕
Louis Rossmann made some amazing videos about this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACX_VfsjkZA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_XiaMzzZUo
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=ACX_VfsjkZA
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=J_XiaMzzZUo
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=oVWk9Zh82O4
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=nxDDXCo7bfU
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
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Office Space that thing!
I have a subscription because my parents bought me an HP printer, as soon as it breaks I'm getting a Brother
You could say it’s already broken 🤣
Cunts
I actually like my printing subscription. I pay like 5€ a month (I don’t quite remember) and don’t have to think about buying new ink, Monitoring the status of my ink level, or facing the issue that I suddenly ran out of ink and can’t print.
That’s what I pay for. I probably pay more than before, but 5€ a month is really negligible. It’s less then one Starbucks coffee.
I hope this is sarcastic or a bot.
It's not. I've met plenty of people like him/her. You pay for convenience and "it just works" because the only alternative they know is the likes of cannon or worse.
Why would they pay 5x the price for brother, it still needs ink! It's hard to convince someone where their entire life they never had a good printer.
Gosh. I'm sorry your situation and needs run counter to the zeitgeist, but that kinda thing ain't welcome here.
(You got my upvote for speaking your opinion. Thanks.)
Meanwhile I paid like $50 for a box of 100 third party ink cartridges. They’ve lasted years. I never have to think about buying ink, monitor the status of ink level, or face the issue of running out ….. and I paid only once. It’s really negligible compared to a 5€/mon subscription
This sounds like a guy who deserves acid splashed all over his body. Or maybe he'd love to go to my Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 sandbox world and be the test rider for all the rides that could never be built in the real world over safety concerns.
I know everybody is enjoying their brother laser printer but I want to shout out an honorable mention to my homie Dell 3330DN who still works without any hiccups or repairs since 2012 and got me through all of uni. Never had to change the drum.