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posted by martyb on Monday January 20 2020, @11:47PM   Printer-friendly
from the who-owns-what dept.

Ryan Sullivan cancelled what he thought was a "random charge for $4.99 per month from HP called 'Instant Ink'". Then his printer refused to print:

It turns out that HP requires its customers to enroll HP Instant Ink eligible printers into one of the Instant Ink plans, and continue paying a monthly subscription in order to be allowed to use the device.

But where's the need to come up with different plans coming from, you may wonder? HP explains: the company charges a fee based on the number of pages a customer prints each month, and the page count is shockingly monitored remotely.

Naturally, the scheme is not advertised as a rather unusual application of DRM, but a way for customers to save time and money. Still, it would seem HP has not exactly gone out of its way to explain all the consequences to those customers.

HP's terms of service also say that these eligible, internet-connected printers can be remotely modified in several ways, including by applying patches, updates, and "changes" – without notifying customers.

Another thing HP can see thanks to the Instant Ink program is the type of documents you print, identifying them by extension as Word, etc., documents, PDFs, or JPEG and other types of images.

Additionally, the HP cartridges have been locked to specific printers for quite a while now.

Earlier on SN:
US Customers Kick Up Class-Action Stink Over Epson's Kyboshing of Third-Party Ink (2019)
Xerox Is No More (2018)
Meg Whitman Resigns (2017)
Supreme Court Lets Consumers Refill Ink Cartridges (2017)
HP to Issue "Optional Firmware Update" Allowing 3rd-Party Ink (2016)


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by driverless on Tuesday January 21 2020, @03:40AM (3 children)

    by driverless (4770) on Tuesday January 21 2020, @03:40AM (#946153)

    It's also partly the clown's fault. He signed up for it despite the exact thing that happened to him being well- and widely-documented. For example PC Mag [pcmag.com] says about Instant Ink:

    When you sign up for an HP Instant Ink plan, you pay a monthly fee to print a defined number of pages per month. The plans are based on the number of pages that you print, not on how many ink cartridges you use. Your monthly fee pays for ink, shipping, and recycling. If you do not print all of your plan pages in a month, you can roll over up to the number of pages per month in your plan. If you print more pages, there is an additional charge but you are still paying the same price per page as your base plan. A printed page counts the same whether it's black and white, a color document, or a photo.

    Which sounds exactly like what he experienced (it then goes on the cover the different plans and what you get for different prices). He got exactly what he signed up for. It's a shit service that I'd never accept, but if you do accept it like he did then you can't later complain about getting exactly what you asked for.

    Starting Score:    1  point
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 21 2020, @08:15AM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 21 2020, @08:15AM (#946232)

    Where exactly does it say that "your printer will be bricked if you at any time cancel the subscription"?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 21 2020, @09:04AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 21 2020, @09:04AM (#946251)

      You pay for X pages, can print X pages. You pay 0 pages, you can print 0 pages.

      The idiot got exactly what he signed for.

    • (Score: 2) by zocalo on Tuesday January 21 2020, @09:28AM

      by zocalo (302) on Tuesday January 21 2020, @09:28AM (#946263)
      Nowhere, because the printer isn't bricked. HP presumably has a different ID code on their subscription cartridges to their retail ones, because it's only the former type of cartridges that are locked out of Ryan's printer and he's perfectly free to procure some suitable retail cartridges from somewhere, install them in his printer, and print whatever he wants if he doesn't want to return to the subscription model. The printer supports both supply models, and even lets you toggle between them, if that's what you wanted to do.
      --
      UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!