HP customers claim firmware update rendered third-party ink verboten | Then the company cranked up the price of cartridges, complaint alleges

I work on copiers for a living. Seriously, fuck HP.

I swear they're designed not to be worked on. Just speaking of the fuser on any Laserjet photocopier, they heat up and cool down constantly. Obviously stuff is going to break and it needs to be repaired.

HP says fuck you! On the little desktop printers, on some models, you have to take all plastic panels off, and they all connect to each other so good luck getting it put back together right. They're built exactly like a rubix cube. I literally clip off plastic tabs and just leave it. The customer never knows.

I've been through official HP training. They told me "we can't teach you on a specific model because we average a new model every month, so we'll just give you a ball park on what to look for"

I stopped calling HP support because they don't even know their own machines. Shout-out to Laser Pros, they're the best.

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This is the best summary I could come up with:

HP is facing a potential class action complaint regarding a firmware update that rendered its printers unable to use ink from any other supplier.

The complaint [PDF] centers around a firmware update issued between late 2022 and early 2023 that is alleged to have disabled a customer's printer if a replacement cartridge that was not HP-branded was installed.

It adds: "In effect, HP used the software update to create a monopoly in the aftermarket for replacement cartridges, permitting it to raise prices without fear of being undercut by competitors."

The complaint claims "the costs of ink for the All-in-One is not trivial or fleeting," and draws a comparison between the $100 needed for a typical set of HP-branded replacement cartridges versus those of a competitor, which it says can be half the price.

HP's end user license agreement states that using a third-party cartridge won't invalidate a warranty.

Ir is seeking class certification, compensation from the printer giant, and an injunction to disable the part of the firmware updates that prevent the use of third-party ink.

The original article contains 547 words, the summary contains 176 words. Saved 68%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

I hope I’ll remember never to buy anything new from HP as that’s disgusting 🤮

Happened to me! Even with me taking efforts ahead of time to prevent the new firmware download, it somehow snuck through. I finally got so fed up with their BS because of this, I got rid of the hp and bought a Brother. Brother workin flawlessly, and I can rest easy knowing it will just print shit when I need it to and not try to extort cash from me to do so.

Are there government consumer projection people working but no one has ever submitted a report so they just don't know?

Another reason to boycott HP

Y'all gonna make me look up the German dictionary so I know what verboten means, gawd damn I don't need no education

(To be fair it's interesting that they'd throw a random German word into an English language headline meant for English language readers, especially as it's the key explanatory word in the headline, and yet it's one we wouldn't commonly know. Unlike commonly used non-English words like Information, or Cul-de-sac, Zeitgeist, Kaput, or Baguette, we - to my knowledge - haven't used the word verboten before over here).

So yeah, I had to Google translate it xD But now I know! Woo!

Not related: but is „verboten“ (forbidden) really used in English? Just wondering because it is German.

HP isn’t what it used to be. I’ve got an HP color laser printer that has been cranking for more than ten years, while using third party toner. It’s sad seeing them like this now.