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Do customers have any legal recourse here? They pretty clearly advertised "Print free for life". Even if its a case of fine print saying they can change the dea
by kayson 6y ago
Do customers have any legal recourse here? They pretty clearly advertised "Print free for life". Even if its a case of fine print saying they can change the deal, surely the advertising would be considered misleading from a legal and/or attorney general's perspective.
- belval 6y agoThat's my train of thought as well, but my guess is that they did the math and they know that there isn't enough money at 0.99$/month to make it worth a class action lawsuit. As always raise awareness with your friends and family not to buy HP's garbage, Epson pulls the same shady practices as far as I know. When possible, buy a laser printer and just don't give any of them more money.
- schoolornot 6y agoMy last company, a multi-billion dollar company decided to scrap printers altogether. Anything special is ordered out. The exception is the Finance team which has two very tiny laser printers.
- theklub 6y agoI thought the go "paperless" push died a decade ago, but maybe not.
- andylynch 6y agoNot a class action but given the smallish $ per user I could see this being effectively pursued with the seller and if that doesn’t work through small claims court, at least in places like the UK/EU. This is a change to the functionality of the printer post sale, and that tends to be viewed as an unreasonable action and one where one sided user agreements can be read by the courts as unfair to the consumer. The important point is the the printer no longer works as advertised and as a starting point this is guaranteed in European law for six years after purchase. (https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/guarantees-returns/united-kingdom/index_en.htm https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/gua...).
- bryanrasmussen 6y agoif it's $1 per month and the user is 20 I suppose that implies a value of $624 for that user's expected lifetime. arguably. In UK can you also get your money back for filing fees etc. if you win?
- Frost1x 6y agoBusinesses own this country so it all boils down to if you have enough financial resources to battle these things out in court. Most people don't care enough or have enough resources to legally fight, effectively nullifying their rights. There is a direct correlation to wealth and rights in this country. Language really has no meaning anymore.
- jjeaff 6y agoThis would be ideal for small claims court. Still takes some resources and time, but minimal compared to a regular lawsuit.
- alasdair_ 6y ago>There is a direct correlation to wealth and rights in this country. Language really has no meaning anymore. There is a useful counter correlation in that it's a lot more costly for a wealthy entity to fight thousands on tiny lawsuits for a few hundred dollars each, all over the country, than it is for these suits to be filed, especially when almost every court proceeding is virtual.
- varispeed 6y agoIt is still going to be a small drop in a bucket, a mild inconvenience and a lot of hassle for an individual. Would you trade few weeks of your life to fight such battle? Will the satisfaction be comparable to satisfaction coming from achieving something productive? I think for all this time you'd have your life filled with bitterness. It's better to take your money elsewhere and spend time on something productive! You can also think about it as cost of learning about evil companies and their practices.
- willcipriano 6y agoThey have this nice line in their TOS: > LIMITATIONS OF LIABILITY AND REMEDIES. IF YOU ARE IN ANY WAY DISSATISFIED WITH THE INSTANT INK SERVICE OR ANY PART THEREOF INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, AN INSTANT INK PROGRAM OR THE SITE, YOUR SOLE AND EXCLUSIVE REMEDY IS TO DISCONTINUE USING THE INSTANT INK SERVICE AND/OR THE APPLICABLE INSTANT INK PROGRAM. I had no idea you could have a contract that says, "if you don't like how we fulfilled the contract all you are allowed to do is go away, even if we burn your house down." https://instantink.hpconnected.com/us/en/terms https://instantink.hpconnected.com/us/en/terms
- Wowfunhappy 6y agoA contract can say whatever you want. That doesn't necessarily make it legally enforceable.
- imglorp 6y agoRight, for example, ATT got stung for calling a cell plan "unlimited" in which a reasonable person would apply the dictionary meaning to that word but be wrong; thus deceptive practice. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/02/att-loses-key-ruling-in-class-action-over-unlimited-data-throttling/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/02/att-loses-key-ru...
- jerf 6y ago"I had no idea you could have a contract that says, "if you don't like how we fulfilled the contract all you are allowed to do is go away, even if we burn your house down."" You can't. Obviously, companies don't like to be sued. What a lot of the tech industry and Silicon Valley has been doing lately is trying to write up their Terms of Service to make it so difficult to initiate any sort of proceedings, or at least appear to be so difficult to initiate any sort of proceedings, that nobody actually will. The risk of this, though, is that if they act so egregiously that somebody actually does get angry enough to break through the activation energy necessary to start something, that it will be both larger and worse than if they had a more conventional approach. Larger in that larger groups of people may break through at once, especially once someone blazes a trail. It's like raising a dam without fixing underlying issues with water management; it may put off the day you have problems, but when the catastrophe hits it'll be even larger. A perfect approach for a short-term-focused modern company, no? That clause is meant to convince you there's nothing you can do. But if someone does file a class-action suit, there's a very good chance the judge will not look favorably upon such a clause at all, and that'll get factored into any damage awards. Personally I think the expected value of this particular shenanigan is quite negative and I think a lot of companies are going to bitten by it in the next decade... but I have a long term perspective, personally.
- Analemma_ 6y agoI’m sure the terms of service include binding arbitration, which always rules for the company.
- thebean11 6y agoSmall claims court would likely get you your money back
- ineedasername 6y agoSure, but that's an ad-hoc solution to a systemic problem. I think we need a change to consumer contract/ToS laws. I remember a few years ago Amazon Prime went from having $3.99 next-day shipping to suddenly charging up to $11.99 for it on one package I ordered. I knew when I signed up, the $3.99 price tag was advertised so I went digging: sure enough, it was not longer advertised, and no longer in their ToS. So I went digging further on how they could do this without any sort of notice to customers. Here's what I found using the internet archive to trace ToS changes wherein Amazon incrementally removed rights & privileges: --When I signed up for Prime, the $3.99 price was in the ToS. So was a provision that said Amazon would notify me of any changes to the ToS 30 days in advance. --A year or so later, the ToS no longer had the 30 day notice provision, but the $3.99 was still there. However, now they no longer had to notify me of a change. --Fast forward a little more, and Amazon was able to change its ToS unilaterally without any advance notice or notification, allowing me to be surprised when I was suddenly asked to pay 2-3x as much for the same service.
- crooked-v 6y agoMy initial thought here would be to sue in small claims court for (based on the new pricing) $0.99/mo × expected lifespan. A small claims judge is likely to be sympathetic given the extremely straightforward advertising, and it would cost HP more to send someone out than to just pay the lump sum.
- wccrawford 6y agoI like it. And if I'd fallen for this scam, I'm pretty sure I'd be pissed enough to do that.
- akersten 6y agoHell, I would even set up a website with instructions and premade exhibits - give it a catchy name like sueHPinSmallClaims dotcom - and encourage everyone to use it, I'd be so indignant.
- ineedasername 6y agoThe legal recourse is a class action lawsuit that 3-5 years from now would result in lawyers getting $X million dollars and customers getting something like a $20 voucher for replacement cartridges.
- nix0n 6y agoProbably still worthwhile because it means HP losing the $X million
- ineedasername 6y agoNot if they have anticipated the cost and determine that $Y additional revenue minute $X legal costs is still > 0
- DominikPeters 6y agoStill better if they end up with $Y - $X not the full $Y.
- ineedasername 6y agoI'm not saying don't sue. I'm saying it won't stop this type of behavior.
- mikestew 6y agoI would be happy for the lawyers to get $X million dollars if it smacks HP on the nose. I suppose one's take on "but the lawyers get all the class action money!" depends on whether one is looking to be made whole (good luck with that), or to punish the company. I tend toward the latter: the whole company can look over their shoulder the next time such jackassery comes up for discussion.
- ineedasername 6y agoExcept they have their own legal team already, and probably budget the incremental cost of additional legal needs for something like this into their product costs. Even if that wasn't the case, a settlement like this sort of coupon, which is common, simply helps them keep more of the customers they cheated. I can't think of many class action lawsuits around this sort of activity where the company was actually harmed by the outcome in any way that would have changed its behavior.
- alasdair_ 6y agoSmall claims court. Add up the total costs for the rest of your life (at 15 pages per) and sue them for that. Then have as many un-busy people that you know do the same thing. I know people who managed to get around $5000 when Equifax leaked their data. They just added up the monthly cost of the most expensive credit monitoring that they could find for the next decade and sued for that amount (then kept the money and didn't bother with the monitoring). It's honestly not very difficult to file and right now the meeting is virtual so you barely have to put in any effort (with the downside that in the past you had a large chance the other party wouldn't bother showing up and you'd win by default).
- varispeed 6y agoI think this may be the case of "too big too fail", that is law does not apply to large companies because they can easily wiggle their way out of anything by pouring money at lawyers or they can stop supporting political party or individual politicians if they won't get their way.