9 ms·

Yes. This is how it works, this is what he clicked the button "I agree" for. He could have chosen the old way and buying the cartridges himself on a regular b

by kmarc 7y ago

Yes. This is how it works, this is what he clicked the button "I agree" for. He could have chosen the old way and buying the cartridges himself on a regular basis, but he chose the subscription model and now he wines about it. What you need to understand about the subscription model is that you DON'T own the cartridge and you DON'T pay for the cartridge. You pay for printed pages. If the ink runs out, the printer automatically orders a set of new ones, for no additional cost. You receive a package to your preferred postal address, that contains the new ink and a sealable, labeled, post-stamped bag in which you will put the old ones and send it back to HP. I absolutely love this model. I pay the minimal 2USD for it (if I exceed the monthly printable 50 pages, I get another 10p/$1, or upgrade my subscription. Unused quota accumulates up to 100p), and I get a monthly email about the detailed pricing. Also, this way the used cartridges (dangerous waste) are handled properly and an environmentally friendly way.

vl 7y ago
On top of that companies make refillable inkjets now. I own Epson like this - runs out of ink, add more ink from the bottle. I’m completely satisfied because there is no cartridge nonsense. In theory I can use cheaper non-Epson ink, but I don’t bother since cost is reasonable.
- asdff 7y ago
  I bet that epson still has a programmed death event and will start barking about the print head after x number of pages. We needed an open source printer yesterday, but of course the priorities aren't there because it is just a printer after all.
  - vl 7y ago
    Nay, they just sell it at full unsubsidized price, it’s not cheap.
    - sleavey 7y ago
      What's the model?
      - defqon 7y ago
        Not OP so not 100% certain, but it's likely to be an Epson Ecotank printer.
      - vl 7y ago
        Epson EcoTank ET-3760
- tomjen3 7y ago
  Am I completely out of the loop? Ink-jet printers were always an insane rip-of, and I got a laser printer once those became cheap enough a bit more than a decade ago. Can't do color, but it prints pretty fast and you don't get issues if the paper gets wet.
  - hedora 7y ago
    I went with a Samsung postscript compatible, duplex black and white laser 5+ years ago. It was a bit over $100. The only problem I’ve had is that there’s a wifi setup button that the cat presses, which disconnects it from wifi. These days, a duplex, 600 dpi color laser is < $200 (though the first hit is a Canon that is not postscript, smb, or lpr compatible, so watch your wallet...) My last N inkjets died due to dried up heads (a Brother all in one scanner printer dried out and ruined the permanent heads in a month or two, on the starter cartridge!) or removal of windows driver support (It was an HP; Linux still worked fine...). Sadly, Samsung sold their printer business to HP. The model I have costs more used than I paid for it new. :-(
    - LyndsySimon 7y ago
      I use a government surplus HP Laserjet 1160. I spotted it on top of a dumpster when I was a poor college kid, took it home, and used it for months before I had to buy toner for it. Generic toner cartridges are $15, and last months to years for me. The printer still has a “Department of Defense” inventory sticker on it.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Yes people who want to print color by color printers. Color printing has been a thing for two decades.
  - vl 7y ago
    They figured out there is a market segment for cartridge-less refillable inkjets and now sell them as well. They cost more than regular inkjets, on par with cheap laser printers.
- zaroth 7y ago
  Amazing when a competitive market leads companies to offer a diverse set of products under various theories of finding product-market fit by prioritizing either end-user convenience vs. price & economy! Also amazing that people will get angry that a company would dare offer a product that doesn’t exactly conform to their own ideological bent.
jammygit 7y ago
"I absolutely love this model." You are right, the model is great for some people in some cases. However, its a model where companies use software to lock you out of being able to use your hardware. This is becoming extremely widespread. Consider also the farmers having to deal with the John Deere tractor licenses and being unable to maintain their own equipment (or Apple preventing you from being able to upgrade or repair your macs/iphones). The problem is that as the practice scales, people end up with no real property rights, and are just ensnared in a hundred terms of service agreements that they literally cannot escape while living a normal life. Lots of potentially dangerous things are harmless or even pleasant on a small scale.
- SergeAx 7y ago
  This is just not "your" hardware anymore, like the Kindle e-books you bought at Amazon are not your books or music you paid for to iTunes is not your music. This is not a sarcasm, I'm just trying to adapt myself to this brand new world and not to cringe when hearing words like this from myself or anyone else.
  - CDSlice 7y ago
    Not to take away from your point, but music purchased from iTunes is your music. Purchased iTunes music is completely DRM free and can be played anyway you want by just copying the files. I'm pretty sure Amazon digital music purchases are DRM free as well.
- sammorrowdrums 7y ago
  While I agree I think that domestic printing is and should be increasingly obsolete so I opted for free tier printing specifically because I wanted a fallback (like keeping an old USB CD-ROM drive in case - like my canon camera firmware was not online and only on the CD they sent me). If you are occasionally forced to send in a paper form or your flight carrier insists on a printed boarding pass etc. it doesn't make economic sense to keep a printer functional at normal cost. I see HP free tier as a legacy support system. Ideally I'd print nothing. It's maddening how much bureaucracy still requires printing. But I agree that on devices that you depend on it is weird. I live in Amsterdam and have a subscription bike (and I pay for the fact that I will always have a replacement bike if any issues come up)... but I guess I wouldn't like a situation where I couldn't buy (and repair) a regular bike.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
sammorrowdrums 7y ago
"You receive a package to your preferred postal address, that contains the new ink and a sealable, labeled, post-stamped bag in which you will put the old ones and send it back to HP." People seem to be missing this part. It's like returning a rental car. You are technically obliged to return the cartridges contractually I believe. The fact that they don't pursue you if you don't is at least a small positive. I can see why some think it's a dark pattern, but it's usual in a rental type scenario to return the thing that was on loan to you
six2seven 7y ago
You see, around ~10 years ago I could just buy online a (even non-genuine) refill kit and just refill the ink in the cartridges by myself. And I could use the printer whenever I wanted. If I run out of the ink, I would just buy the ink refill set which costed around 5-6€. Think that such kit could be re-used to fill multiple carriages and last many months. If I did not use the printer for 2 months, I would not need to pay any fee for just having a printer in idle state. I "owned" the printer. Nowadays, you seem not to even "own" the printer nor the cartridges. Everything becomes a service where you should be in the loop continuously paying for it. And we are consciously supporting such economy.
- nathancahill 7y ago
  Yes. I do this too with ink from Precision Colors for photo printing. The cost per page is a fraction of ordering new, original carts. They even include a chip to reset the "low ink" flag built in to the cart that is suppose to prevent you from refilling. [0] http://precisioncolors.com/ http://precisioncolors.com/
- kmarc 7y ago
  Same as with running water. Thankfully I don't have to dig my own well anymore, even worse: in some countries I'm not even allowed to, and I have to pay for the service! This model is there for a very long time, and makes our lives much easier. And if it doesn't lock you in, is offered for quite cheap (we are talking about $3-5 per month, or even the free tier) I don't see the problem with it. As long as you have the freedom of choice (to switch vendors, or do it yourself), I don't see the problem.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - tialaramex 7y ago
    Water supply is a natural monopoly which is pretty different straight away. The externalities are really nasty (say you extract water under your property, the water doesn't care about property lines so water will flow from other land and potentially cause subsidence, a big cost to somebody else) and water is actually part of a global cycle so while one person can get away with just taking their water from a well and dumping effluent into the lake if a million people do that a bunch of them are going to die. And as a result of all this it's heavily regulated unlike printer ink.
makomk 7y ago
I think HP are selling printers now where the in-box cartridges are part of Instant Ink, so it's possible that "chose" here could mean "was foolish enough to purchase a printer from HP, king of the ink rip-off".
- chiefalchemist 7y ago
  The blades are always over priced when the razor is under-priced. We can't have it both ways.
a3_nm 7y ago
> Also, this way the used cartridges (dangerous waste) are handled properly and an environmentally friendly way. You don't need a subscription model for this. At least for laser printers, HP allows you to mail back your used cartridges to them, free of charge to you.
- slouch 7y ago
  https://www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-information/environment/product-recycling.html https://www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-information/environment/product...
xadhominemx 7y ago
The cartridges are not particularly dangerous, nor does HP recycle them (common misconceptions). The reason they send you a prepaid envelope is so that you mail the cartridge back to them instead selling it to a remanufacturer. Edit: stop downvoting me, I am a printing industry expert
- mark-r 7y ago
  Appeals to authority are unlikely to move this crowd.
  - xadhominemx 7y ago
    Not so much an appeal to authority as this is a fact I am correct about
JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
> Poe's law is an adage of Internet culture stating that, without a clear indicator of the author's intent, it is impossible to create a parody of extreme views so obviously exaggerated that it cannot be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of the views being parodied. Your comment extolling the virtues of subscription locked rental ink has me here.
12xo 7y ago
Wow. Everything you wrote reads like a HP PR piece distributed to employees to "help" them articulate the changes... Do you work for HP?
- dang 7y ago
  This comment breaks the site guideline against accusations of astroturfing. Would you please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here? Lots more explanation at https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=by:dang%20astroturf https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....
grawprog 7y ago
>is that you DON'T own the cartridge and you DON'T pay for the cartridge. You pay for printed pages. >pay the minimal 2USD for it (if I exceed the monthly printable 50 pages, I get another 10p/$1, or upgrade my subscription. Unused quota accumulates up to 100p), and I get a monthly email about the detailed pricing. This model doesn't make sense to me. Why are you paying by the page and not by the amount of ink actually used? That's like paying for internet by the number of webpages you visit as opposed to the bandwidth you use. The ink is the product you are using. Unless they're supplying the paper too? It makes sense to charge by the page in a place like Staples or something, but as a subscription for a home printer it seems ridiculous to pay by the page.
- CharlesW 7y ago
  > The ink is the product you are using. You can think of the ink as an implementation detail. With this model you're paying for a capability that happens to be priced on a per-page basis. That's simpler/more understandable for most people than pricing by, say, ink volume. Yes, this can seem very strange, and it won't make sense for everybody.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- toast0 7y ago
  It's charge by the page because it's a simple metric that everyone will understand. Mostly, people aren't printing full coverage (unless it's photos), because it makes the paper soggy. Postage is probably a bigger cost than ink for HP here; especially for lower volume users who need new cartridges based on time rather than volume.
sneak 7y ago
It seems to me from the tweet that he was being charged without it being made clear to him that this is what he was being charged for. If your subscribers don’t understand that to which they are subscribed, that seems like a problem to me.
ericlewis 7y ago
I own one of these and it’s well explained too. They ask for signup information, a credit card, etc. explaining exactly why they need it. I can understand if you forgot all of this I guess, but it seems hard to forget to me, when it’s such a unique setup flow to a printer and they warn multiple times. Edit: oh no, it seems that OP actually got shafted by a change to this experience... bummer.
giardini 7y ago
kmarc says>"and now he _wines_ about it." "Whines! Whines!" NOT "wines"! Whine - intransitive verb. (1)To produce a sustained, high-pitched, plaintive sound, as in pain, fear, or complaint. (2)To complain or protest in a childish or annoying fashion. To _wine_ is to drink wine! I am whining in sense (1), although you are not here to witness my anguish at your language. I might be whining in sense (2) in this post, b/c I am fairly certain that no one but myself cares. Otherwise, nice note on the good points of the subscription model for print cartridges.

by kmarc 7y ago

vl 7y ago

On top of that companies make refillable inkjets now. I own Epson like this - runs out of ink, add more ink from the bottle. I’m completely satisfied because there is no cartridge nonsense. In theory I can use cheaper non-Epson ink, but I don’t bother since cost is reasonable.

asdff 7y ago
I bet that epson still has a programmed death event and will start barking about the print head after x number of pages. We needed an open source printer yesterday, but of course the priorities aren't there because it is just a printer after all.
- vl 7y ago
  Nay, they just sell it at full unsubsidized price, it’s not cheap.
  - sleavey 7y ago
    What's the model?
    - defqon 7y ago
      Not OP so not 100% certain, but it's likely to be an Epson Ecotank printer.
    - vl 7y ago
      Epson EcoTank ET-3760
tomjen3 7y ago
Am I completely out of the loop? Ink-jet printers were always an insane rip-of, and I got a laser printer once those became cheap enough a bit more than a decade ago. Can't do color, but it prints pretty fast and you don't get issues if the paper gets wet.
- hedora 7y ago
  I went with a Samsung postscript compatible, duplex black and white laser 5+ years ago. It was a bit over $100. The only problem I’ve had is that there’s a wifi setup button that the cat presses, which disconnects it from wifi. These days, a duplex, 600 dpi color laser is < $200 (though the first hit is a Canon that is not postscript, smb, or lpr compatible, so watch your wallet...) My last N inkjets died due to dried up heads (a Brother all in one scanner printer dried out and ruined the permanent heads in a month or two, on the starter cartridge!) or removal of windows driver support (It was an HP; Linux still worked fine...). Sadly, Samsung sold their printer business to HP. The model I have costs more used than I paid for it new. :-(
  - LyndsySimon 7y ago
    I use a government surplus HP Laserjet 1160. I spotted it on top of a dumpster when I was a poor college kid, took it home, and used it for months before I had to buy toner for it. Generic toner cartridges are $15, and last months to years for me. The printer still has a “Department of Defense” inventory sticker on it.
- scarface74 7y ago
  Yes people who want to print color by color printers. Color printing has been a thing for two decades.
- vl 7y ago
  They figured out there is a market segment for cartridge-less refillable inkjets and now sell them as well. They cost more than regular inkjets, on par with cheap laser printers.
zaroth 7y ago
Amazing when a competitive market leads companies to offer a diverse set of products under various theories of finding product-market fit by prioritizing either end-user convenience vs. price & economy! Also amazing that people will get angry that a company would dare offer a product that doesn’t exactly conform to their own ideological bent.

jammygit 7y ago

"I absolutely love this model." You are right, the model is great for some people in some cases. However, its a model where companies use software to lock you out of being able to use your hardware. This is becoming extremely widespread. Consider also the farmers having to deal with the John Deere tractor licenses and being unable to maintain their own equipment (or Apple preventing you from being able to upgrade or repair your macs/iphones). The problem is that as the practice scales, people end up with no real property rights, and are just ensnared in a hundred terms of service agreements that they literally cannot escape while living a normal life. Lots of potentially dangerous things are harmless or even pleasant on a small scale.

SergeAx 7y ago
This is just not "your" hardware anymore, like the Kindle e-books you bought at Amazon are not your books or music you paid for to iTunes is not your music. This is not a sarcasm, I'm just trying to adapt myself to this brand new world and not to cringe when hearing words like this from myself or anyone else.
- CDSlice 7y ago
  Not to take away from your point, but music purchased from iTunes is your music. Purchased iTunes music is completely DRM free and can be played anyway you want by just copying the files. I'm pretty sure Amazon digital music purchases are DRM free as well.
sammorrowdrums 7y ago
While I agree I think that domestic printing is and should be increasingly obsolete so I opted for free tier printing specifically because I wanted a fallback (like keeping an old USB CD-ROM drive in case - like my canon camera firmware was not online and only on the CD they sent me). If you are occasionally forced to send in a paper form or your flight carrier insists on a printed boarding pass etc. it doesn't make economic sense to keep a printer functional at normal cost. I see HP free tier as a legacy support system. Ideally I'd print nothing. It's maddening how much bureaucracy still requires printing. But I agree that on devices that you depend on it is weird. I live in Amsterdam and have a subscription bike (and I pay for the fact that I will always have a replacement bike if any issues come up)... but I guess I wouldn't like a situation where I couldn't buy (and repair) a regular bike.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

sammorrowdrums 7y ago

"You receive a package to your preferred postal address, that contains the new ink and a sealable, labeled, post-stamped bag in which you will put the old ones and send it back to HP." People seem to be missing this part. It's like returning a rental car. You are technically obliged to return the cartridges contractually I believe. The fact that they don't pursue you if you don't is at least a small positive. I can see why some think it's a dark pattern, but it's usual in a rental type scenario to return the thing that was on loan to you

six2seven 7y ago

You see, around ~10 years ago I could just buy online a (even non-genuine) refill kit and just refill the ink in the cartridges by myself. And I could use the printer whenever I wanted. If I run out of the ink, I would just buy the ink refill set which costed around 5-6€. Think that such kit could be re-used to fill multiple carriages and last many months. If I did not use the printer for 2 months, I would not need to pay any fee for just having a printer in idle state. I "owned" the printer. Nowadays, you seem not to even "own" the printer nor the cartridges. Everything becomes a service where you should be in the loop continuously paying for it. And we are consciously supporting such economy.

nathancahill 7y ago
Yes. I do this too with ink from Precision Colors for photo printing. The cost per page is a fraction of ordering new, original carts. They even include a chip to reset the "low ink" flag built in to the cart that is suppose to prevent you from refilling. [0] http://precisioncolors.com/ http://precisioncolors.com/
kmarc 7y ago
Same as with running water. Thankfully I don't have to dig my own well anymore, even worse: in some countries I'm not even allowed to, and I have to pay for the service! This model is there for a very long time, and makes our lives much easier. And if it doesn't lock you in, is offered for quite cheap (we are talking about $3-5 per month, or even the free tier) I don't see the problem with it. As long as you have the freedom of choice (to switch vendors, or do it yourself), I don't see the problem.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- tialaramex 7y ago
  Water supply is a natural monopoly which is pretty different straight away. The externalities are really nasty (say you extract water under your property, the water doesn't care about property lines so water will flow from other land and potentially cause subsidence, a big cost to somebody else) and water is actually part of a global cycle so while one person can get away with just taking their water from a well and dumping effluent into the lake if a million people do that a bunch of them are going to die. And as a result of all this it's heavily regulated unlike printer ink.

makomk 7y ago

I think HP are selling printers now where the in-box cartridges are part of Instant Ink, so it's possible that "chose" here could mean "was foolish enough to purchase a printer from HP, king of the ink rip-off".

chiefalchemist 7y ago
The blades are always over priced when the razor is under-priced. We can't have it both ways.

a3_nm 7y ago

> Also, this way the used cartridges (dangerous waste) are handled properly and an environmentally friendly way. You don't need a subscription model for this. At least for laser printers, HP allows you to mail back your used cartridges to them, free of charge to you.

slouch 7y ago
https://www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-information/environment/product-recycling.html https://www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-information/environment/product...

xadhominemx 7y ago

The cartridges are not particularly dangerous, nor does HP recycle them (common misconceptions). The reason they send you a prepaid envelope is so that you mail the cartridge back to them instead selling it to a remanufacturer. Edit: stop downvoting me, I am a printing industry expert

mark-r 7y ago
Appeals to authority are unlikely to move this crowd.
- xadhominemx 7y ago
  Not so much an appeal to authority as this is a fact I am correct about

JohnJamesRambo 7y ago

> Poe's law is an adage of Internet culture stating that, without a clear indicator of the author's intent, it is impossible to create a parody of extreme views so obviously exaggerated that it cannot be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of the views being parodied. Your comment extolling the virtues of subscription locked rental ink has me here.

12xo 7y ago

Wow. Everything you wrote reads like a HP PR piece distributed to employees to "help" them articulate the changes... Do you work for HP?

dang 7y ago
This comment breaks the site guideline against accusations of astroturfing. Would you please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here? Lots more explanation at https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=by:dang%20astroturf https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....

grawprog 7y ago

>is that you DON'T own the cartridge and you DON'T pay for the cartridge. You pay for printed pages. >pay the minimal 2USD for it (if I exceed the monthly printable 50 pages, I get another 10p/$1, or upgrade my subscription. Unused quota accumulates up to 100p), and I get a monthly email about the detailed pricing. This model doesn't make sense to me. Why are you paying by the page and not by the amount of ink actually used? That's like paying for internet by the number of webpages you visit as opposed to the bandwidth you use. The ink is the product you are using. Unless they're supplying the paper too? It makes sense to charge by the page in a place like Staples or something, but as a subscription for a home printer it seems ridiculous to pay by the page.

CharlesW 7y ago
> The ink is the product you are using. You can think of the ink as an implementation detail. With this model you're paying for a capability that happens to be priced on a per-page basis. That's simpler/more understandable for most people than pricing by, say, ink volume. Yes, this can seem very strange, and it won't make sense for everybody.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
toast0 7y ago
It's charge by the page because it's a simple metric that everyone will understand. Mostly, people aren't printing full coverage (unless it's photos), because it makes the paper soggy. Postage is probably a bigger cost than ink for HP here; especially for lower volume users who need new cartridges based on time rather than volume.

sneak 7y ago

It seems to me from the tweet that he was being charged without it being made clear to him that this is what he was being charged for. If your subscribers don’t understand that to which they are subscribed, that seems like a problem to me.

ericlewis 7y ago

I own one of these and it’s well explained too. They ask for signup information, a credit card, etc. explaining exactly why they need it. I can understand if you forgot all of this I guess, but it seems hard to forget to me, when it’s such a unique setup flow to a printer and they warn multiple times. Edit: oh no, it seems that OP actually got shafted by a change to this experience... bummer.

giardini 7y ago

kmarc says>"and now he _wines_ about it." "Whines! Whines!" NOT "wines"! Whine - intransitive verb. (1)To produce a sustained, high-pitched, plaintive sound, as in pain, fear, or complaint. (2)To complain or protest in a childish or annoying fashion. To _wine_ is to drink wine! I am whining in sense (1), although you are not here to witness my anguish at your language. I might be whining in sense (2) in this post, b/c I am fairly certain that no one but myself cares. Otherwise, nice note on the good points of the subscription model for print cartridges.