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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)


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  • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Tuesday January 21 2020, @09:39AM

    by TheRaven (270) on Tuesday January 21 2020, @09:39AM (#946270) Journal

    Let's see them try to push around FedEx like this

    It's typically Xerox, not HP, but a lot of big companies have an agreement like this for their printers: you lease the device, someone else is responsible for sending out support techs to replace or service parts and refill the toner. I don't know if Kinko's does this, but it seems quite plausible that they would (they won't want to pay one tech per store, and they're probably too spread out to make financial sense operating their own servicing network).

    Proposed real solution? Well, you hear so much about DIY 3-d printers. Can DIY, "open hardware" 2d printing really be that hard?

    Or you could just buy a printer. Lots of companies make decent and cheap colour laser printers now. If it breaks out of warranty, you're on your own. If it runs out of toner, you have to buy and install replacements. It's probably cheaper than a lease or lease-buy hybrid scheme, but comes at a cost of increased risk and responsibility. Which you choose is up to you.

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