HP raising Instant Ink subscription pricing significantly

At their "cheapest" 0.099 euro / $0.11 USD tier it is already literally cheaper per page (albeit certainly not faster) for me to print documents as 8.5x11" 0.1mm thick single layer slabs of plastic on my 3D printer.

An entire "blank" page, i.e. no cutouts for text or anything, would be about 0.754 grams of plastic. That's about $0.0143 per page at a not-too-exorbitant retail cost of PLA filament ($18.99 USD for a kilo) and the material usage would be even less once the negative space for text is subtracted. And I don't even have to buy the paper.

That's mind boggling. Apparently I'm in the wrong racket.

Get a Brother laserjet.

Holy shit, .15 euros per page? Why not just run to der Kinkos? I haven’t checked but I imagine it’s cheaper there. I get the convenience of having a printer at home but this is like if every cup of coffee you make at home cost you the Starbucks $8.25.

Brother printer gang printing with their tears of joy.

Jesus fuckin Christ I was today years old when I learned about HP Instant Ink. Good gracious what a scam

Easy. Never buy HP. Their printers are shit and so are their laptops.

It amazes me that there are so many people who buy a printer, are offered this "pay $x a month for Y pages" type of plan, and say yes. I mean, sure, HP sucks, but they wouldn't be able to get away with such slimy business practices if there weren't so many people willing to pay.

If you still own a HP printer, it's your own fault. Sorry. Got an Canon with liquid refill, loved it, equipped my company with it & recommended it to everyone I know. It's not even expensive & the quality is impeccable. Plus: no problems whatsoever over Linux.

EDIT: CANON, not Epson. I'm distracted sometimes. Canon PIXMA G4511, sub 300 Eur.

Breaking news: Printer company behaves like printer companies always have. User hostile.

So the plan dictates how many pages you can print each month? Feck no! I own a Brother laser printer and I’m so glad I escaped the HP madness years ago.

hahahaa i recently dumped them for a big, sturdy, traditional, offline Brother laser. it's ridiculous how much more satisfying it is to print, especially without HP breathing over your shoulder counting how many pages you've printed in the last billing period

Just making it easier not to buy one!

Being boycotting this shitstain company since Carly Fiorina turned it into a perfect example of peak 1990's MBA management style (the kind that killed companies like GE) and, once again, I get to pat myself on the back for it.

Almost 20 years of regular smug self-satisfaction for free is a pretty good investment.

Ink subscription is a bad descriptor

You pay per page, if you have extra ink leftover then you don’t have access to it

If like me you don't print much but still need a printer occasionally, get a laser printer (possibly a scanner multifunction, since it can be handy to scan your receipts), and just buy your cartridges normally. Laser toner won't dry up like ink does, so you end up paying less for your infrequent prints in the long run.

Wow, what a scam!

You know why all of the printer companies are so shitty? It's because they're in the business of selling printers. That's why they break and cost so much to maintain. You know why the sewing machine company sells printers that work? Because they accidentally let some of their sewing machine engineers make printers.

Seriously, fuck HP.

HP actually has a brilliant business strategy.

1. First get a huge customer base via cheap ass product

2. Remove the customers who care about quality

3. Remove the customers who care about reliability

4. Remove the customers who care about price

5. Remove the customers who pay attention to their monthly bills

voila, you have like 3 people left who you can charge infinite money for a lump of shit. Infinite profit margins

I've seen a lot of recommendations for Brother, I want to add one for Ricoh.

I bought a B/W laser printer from Ricoh (213w IIRC) a decade ago for under 40 bucks and a new generic, no-name Amazon toner refill for 25 like 5 years ago. Printed thousands of pages, just sitting in a corner under the stairs.

Bonus: it uses Wi-Fi (so anyone in the house can print) and is compatible with generic PCL drivers in Linux.

The only thing that still might save printers is competition.

I will never buy or recommend HP printers ever again. If you need a general printer, Brother all the way now.

Are these posts about HP just a way for Brother to advertise in the comment section

I mean I'm definitely cancelling my HP subscription, but still. It's a lot.

Who the fuck keep buying HP in 2023 when there are lots of other brands available in the market?

It's literally cheaper for me to drive to a local printing shop, pay for parking, and drive back, than buy one of these dogshit HP printers, and then get scammed by their ink cartridges

The number of papers that subscribers are allowed to print...

hahaha

This is yet another reason why I would not buy or recommend HP printers anymore. My ancient laserjet from 10 years ago is still going strong, but if it ever kicks the bucket, I'm getting a Brother. They seem to just work without any hassle.

I am guessing people aren't printing as much as they used to and the prices will just go up eventually.

Also, fuck printers, and HP specifically.

HP selling hardware with digital blackmail fees

Cannon has gotten so bad, that I can't remember what printer brand I hated before them. I am pretty sure it was cannon though.

Subscription-based hardware business models, or anything that is cloud-based have a strong tendency to do this. They sucker you into buying their hardware with rock bottom prices and reasonable subscription fees and slowly they increase the prices and put more and more features and functionalities behind increasing paywalls.

Never buy anything that you don't fully own after paying for it.

My brother laser jet still happily prints.

in the year of our lord below 2023, it is so easy to just go to a print shop the 0.5 times per year you have to print something

We solved printing decades ago. What’s the need to constantly add more complexity in pricing? It’s not like there were major breakthroughs in technology or something. Printing is printing.

The cheapest plan is .10 euro a month per page if you only print 10 pages. (.99 euro, max 10 pages). Just pay a library or kinkos at that point!

Good, HP finally running their printer businesses into the ground. Paperless or bust.

Laughs in Epson Ecotank

omg, fuck these guys

/Shocked pickachu face.
Get 'em hooked, make 'em pay.

dell

Anything corporations think you can't do without will be raised until enough people have no choice but to stop buying them, then they'll hold it there.

I use Instant Ink in the US, and I haven't received an email about a price increase.

I know no one wants to hear this, based on past experience, but I'll say it anyway: The plan has worked fine for us. Our ink costs went from $60-$80/year to $12. The printer works fine, too; we've not had any problems with it. Obviously we don't print a ton, but we do print enough that we want to have a printer. If we did print a ton of stuff, I'd definitely go a different direction than Instant Ink, but for our light use, it works fine.

I actually have a HP printer with instant ink. When it first launched it was great, there was a "free" tier that was like up to 10 pages free per month.

I don't print a lot but like having a printer for the odd job so that was ideal for me. Now and again a new ink cartridge would arrive and I just didn't think about it.

But they took away the free tier, so I've been on that £0.99 plan which is like 15 pages a month. I put up with it because it was convenient enough to not have to worry about ink, but I was still pissed off at the rug pull.

If they do raise the price in the UK, I'll just sell the printer and buy a new one that does super cheap ink.

Any recommendations out there?

HP is like the facebook of printers. Hugely popular; absolute shit product.

Epson Eco tank to F HP's bullshit in the A.

After 15 years of having to buy a new ink printer almost every year. We just bought an entry level laser printer. Same printer for 20 years now. Never even changed the toner yet. Was a huge upfront cost of 500$ compared to the 100$ ink jets, but man is it ever nice to just completely forget your printer exists until you hit the print button, grab your document, then go back to completely forgetting you own a printer. Never have to put any thought or effort into it. Just sits there always being ready and fully functional.

When we do have to change the toner, the exact same standardized cartridges are still the ones they use on the new ones, so they will be around when we need them.

HP taking business ideas from Elon I see.

“The beatings will continue until moral improves”

Good. Stop printing.

the article sorta implies that only 'hp+' denies use of third-party cartridges for life of the printer.. but just plain 'instant ink' subs do, too, through mandatory automatic firmware updates to the printer that will immediately install a firmware update with 'dynamic security' that blocks all but 'genuine' oem cartridges.

You can pry my EcoTank from my cold, dead hands.

I'm going to poke the hive.

I actually have zero issues with my HP laser printer, and I've never been pestered to use their Ink/Toner subscription service.

It's only a hassle if you choose to use it?

They're a fucking shitty company, sure agreed, but last I checked (unless it's specific models that I'm unaware of which require it) it's still a service you have to choose to use. If you don't choose to use it... you can just buy ink and toner normally, like I do.

It took me almost two years to run out of toner from the date of purchase. I don't print a lot.

Phase printers the fuck out already. No, we dont absolutely need paper in every office.

Too bad, you can either use expensive ink, or use expensive subscription.

Do they still do the free tier that gives 10 pages a month?

50% of 0 == 0 :)

I have not had to print anything in a long time. A long time. What are people printing?

There's a simple solution to that:

Well color me shocked.

Bold move, Cotton. Let's see if it works out XD

Did... did they suffer some head trauma?

You Dawg, that's still a big FU! HP for me...

Damn. I don't print much, but I did get my HP printer dirt cheap. Wish there was some sort of hack around this.