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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)
(Score: 5, Interesting) by TheRaven on Tuesday January 21 2020, @09:30AM (4 children)
I can see the attraction of having someone else monitor the amount of ink that a printer uses and send me replacements when I need them. In a corporate environment, that's pretty much what you get from the high-end vendors: you lease the device, it reports to them when it's low on toner or a part needs replacing or servicing, and they send a support tech to handle it as required. A low-end version of that service sounds useful if it doesn't collect ludicrous amounts of personal information and the customer knows that that is what they're buying (or, rather, leasing).
My mother 'borrowed' my printer a few years ago and then moved sufficiently far away that it would be cheaper for me to buy a new one than ship it back, so I haven't bothered with a printer for quite a while, but I can see the attraction of this kind of service if you print a moderate amount. Inkjets don't really make financial sense for anyone though: If you print a lot, the per-page costs are too high. If you don't print much, the odds of the ink drying up on the heads and your wasting a lot of the contents of a cartridge are high. There's probably a sweet spot somewhere in the middle, but I have no idea where it is. The last two printers I owned were lasers (mono then colour) and could happily print pages cheaply after standing idle for a month.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 4, Interesting) by PiMuNu on Tuesday January 21 2020, @10:13AM (3 children)
> The amount of detail that they collect (which is probably a GDPR violation).
Probably it was signed off in the ToS. GDPR doesn't prevent you from letting people extract data, but it requires your consent.
(Score: 4, Informative) by TheRaven on Tuesday January 21 2020, @01:26PM (2 children)
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 21 2020, @05:34PM (1 child)
It would seem fairly easy to argue that knowing how much is printed is required to send ink cartridge refills when they'll be needed.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Tuesday January 21 2020, @06:57PM
sudo mod me up