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Years ago, I ran out of ink in a HP All-in-One printer at my business at an inopportune time. To make sure it didn’t happen again, I bought a bunch of extras o

Years ago, I ran out of ink in a HP All-in-One printer at my business at an inopportune time. To make sure it didn’t happen again, I bought a bunch of extras on Amazon. The extras arrived, everything looked normal, and I set them aside for a rainy day. Some time later when I finally used the ink I bought, imagine my surprise when the printer wouldn’t accept the ink because it was from the “wrong region”. HP printer ink is region locked! I called HP support and they fed me an unbelievable story that this was for my own good. You see, ink in different regions is turned for the climate in that region, the support rep explained! I was dumbfounded at such a stupid explanation. With no other option and wanting to prevent others from making a similar mistake, I tweeted about my experience. Magically, HP support promptly contacted me and sent me replacements. So now I’ve learned that not only is HP unscrupulous and manipulative, you are wasting your time bothering with normal support channels. You’ll only get results if you embarrass them publicly. I’ve purchased my last HP printer, but I fear each of their competitors is just as bad.

serf 4y ago
>I’ve purchased my last HP printer, but I fear each of their competitors is just as bad. you're probably right, but I purchased an Epson 'EcoTank' printer, black-and-white printing only & with a refillable ink hopper and couldn't be happier for simple document printing. The only gotcha i'm aware of is that they use this 'primer box' thing to squirt excess ink into during nozzle procedures that apparently will eventually fill up and require replacement, but I haven't heard of any need to do so after 3+ years of printing, so i'll count that as a win as compared to cartridge replacement which seemed to be a constant burden with our previous HP units.
- kyrra 4y ago
  I went with Epson as well after having a xerox laser printer for about a decade. The xerox allowed me to do aftermarket toner and it work decently well, but it's still had issues. Sadly a good laser printer, the toner is just far too expensive. When I was researching the Epson printers, I learned about pigment ink and how it doesn't smear with water like traditional inkjet printers did. It's worked really well for the last few years I've had it.
- makeitdouble 4y ago
  Sadly Epson is getting out of laser printer business [0], which to me signals they’ll be fully focusing on screwing users going forward. [0] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/epson-completes-business-mfp-range-130000031.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/epson-completes-business-mfp-...
liendolucas 4y ago
Another surprise is that if you want to use the printer over USB you have to purchase that cable *separately*. If you purchase online is very easy to fall for this one as people won't check for this, this happened to me around ~2 years ago with one of these low end pieces of crap.
- pbhjpbhj 4y ago
  Honestly, I prefer this, it seems to save millions of excess cables being sent to landfill ... a good company would allow you to order one free with the printer, or have a coupon in the box to get one for postage.
  - GekkePrutser 4y ago
    It's done to offer the office supply shops a bonus by giving them the extra sale of their ridiculously overpriced USB cables. They make more profit on those than on the printer itself as they're just cheap Chinese $1 cables. Another scam in this totally broken market.
- ethbr0 4y ago
  Is it a custom cable? Every one I've ever seen (in the USB era) is a standard Type B cable. https://www.newnex.com/usb-connector-type-guide.php https://www.newnex.com/usb-connector-type-guide.php
  - account42 4y ago
    I never understood the reason for separate Type B connectors when the standard A, micro or now C-type connectors would work just as well and allow people to use the millions of cables of those they already have.
    - detaro 4y ago
      Pre-USB-C: USB A is host, USB B is device - be it normal-size-B or micro-size-B. Those should be the most common cables. (I'm not sure I'd have any standard-A-to-A?)
hoistbypetard 4y ago
> I fear each of their competitors is just as bad. I can't speak to current practices, as my current Brother printer is now 7 years old and is still on its second toner cartridge. It's a B&W laser with wifi, a duplexer, and whatever discovery stuff that iDevices need to find and print to it driverless. It replaced a very similar Brother printer that had gotten a solid 10 years of service, and which I chose to replace rather than repair when the fuser died mostly because I wanted the iDevice affordances. Both of those printers also worked smoothly from Linux desktops, too, thanks to pretty good PostScript emulation. Maybe they've gone to crap now, but I'm optimistic that if I needed another B&W laser, something like their current HL-2350DW or HL-2370DW would provide a similarly inexpensive, no-bullshit experience now. The thing that worked for me was giving up on color printing. The supplies for that are eye-wateringly expensive IMO, and I seldom really need it. Last time I had a color printer at home, it was an Epson ink jet of some description, and my color prints were so infrequent that sometimes the cartridge would dry out after a few dozen pages. And worst of all, it'd refuse to do B&W prints if one of the colors was dry. I decided I'd just go to Kinko's if I needed a color document, or to one of several drug stores that lets you print photos if I needed photos. Black and White lasers are stable. Taking apart my Brother, it is extremely similar to the Canon engines from the 1980s. Which were themselves extremely similar to photocopiers that have been in production since quite a bit earlier than that. B&W laser printing is such a well-solved problem, if you can stand to go with that you can save yourself a ton of aggravation and quite a bit of money.
- Akronymus 4y ago
  Brother is one of the VERY few companies I'd choose without thinking twice. At least in terms of printers. So far, only had good experiences. And now I realize that sounds like astroturfing.
  - tailspin2019 4y ago
    Agreed. Brother (laser) printers are extremely reliable in my experience too. I’ve been using them for close to 20 years now. HP probably would have been my only other choice if/when I have to replace my superb (and crazy cheap) Brother B&W laser but after reading this post I will never go near HP printers again. Edit: just read about Brother’s nasty firmware update elsewhere in the comments here. Sigh. I guess I’ll just have to stop buying printers altogether.
xerxesaa 4y ago
I bought a Canon Maxify GX7020 a year ago and I've been quite happy with it. Ticks all the boxes of having printer, scanner, fax, and full duplex on both scanning and printing. Most importantly it uses ink tanks. They don't last as long as laser toner, but if you want an ink jet, it's great because there is no cartridge. You just fill it up with ink. I also stopped buying HP after I noticed all the scams they pull with their ink cartridges. As others have mentioned, a simple Brother printer is also a great option.
matheusmoreira 4y ago
> You’ll only get results if you embarrass them publicly. Tips on how to do this most effectively?
- ethbr0 4y ago
  Post on Usenet.
tjpnz 4y ago
>You see, ink in different regions is turned for the climate in that region, the support rep explained! I was dumbfounded at such a stupid explanation. If I had my fuck you money I'd get a lab to put that to the test and then instruct my high priced lawyer to serve papers. There must be consequences for telling blatant fibs like that.
- thayne 4y ago
  I don't think you need a lab. I'm pretty doubtful the region it is locked to would be smaller than the united states. And the US has several very different clomates. Just order ink from a few states with different climates, say florida, maine, arizona, etc. If they all work on a printer bought in the US, clearly climate isn't the reason. Or even just point out that by that logic, in many areas you should then need to use different ink in different seasons.
- seanp2k2 4y ago
  I wonder if they also have special cartridges for the southern hemisphere where documents print bottom to top.
  - f1shy 4y ago
    Exactly maybe is not climate, but Coriolis effect on the toner.
    - BrandoElFollito 4y ago
      Don't be silly - the coriolis effect is way to small. It has been proven with the sink water turning clockwise experiments. This is clearly a quantum mechanics effect, of the less known ones. The same one that makes all alien land in the US (or at least this is what I saw in various documentaries)
- emodendroket 4y ago
  If so then every call center in America is ripe for lawsuit because they're just making shit up to placate you half the time.
emodendroket 4y ago
> I called HP support and they fed me an unbelievable story that this was for my own good. You see, ink in different regions is turned for the climate in that region, the support rep explained! I was dumbfounded at such a stupid explanation. [...] you are wasting your time bothering with normal support channels. I worked in a call center for 8 months and I'll tell you this is pretty much all of them. You call up and talk to a front-line agent who wasn't really clued in on the reasoning for anything and isn't empowered to do much that falls outside standard workflows. You might as well ask your friends why HP does something because he'll come up with an answer from as much information as the agent has. You might be able to escalate to somebody who actually has the power to make any kind of exception if you insist on it but that's definitely not the first layer.
oldgradstudent 4y ago
> I called HP support and they fed me an unbelievable story that this was for my own good. You see, ink in different regions is turned for the climate in that region, the support rep explained! I was dumbfounded at such a stupid explanation. I don't doubt their explanation for a moment. We all know the weather in Alaska and Florida is very similar, while the weather in London is completely different.
- alexdbird 4y ago
  Well, they're not going to tell you there's something in the US ink that's banned in the EU, or vice versa — this is purely an example of another type of explanation, of course.
mattkevan 4y ago
I had a similar experience where I discovered that the HP printer I’d bought from a major UK retailer had come with the wrong region ink and was now permanently locked to US cartridges. I’ll never give HP money for anything ever again.
userbinator 4y ago
The climate explanation is not entirely without basis, judging by the relative popularity of inkjets compared to lasers in (moist) Southeast Asia; but if that was the real reason rather than price differentiation, they should've been far more transparent with it. I know some cartridges also have expiry dates, which is at least somewhat more reasonable as ink does dry, but instead of being simply a label you read, they're encoded on the cartridge chip and the printer refuses to use them if they've expired.
MonkeyClub 4y ago
> You’ll only get results if you embarrass them publicly. This is sadly official common practice. I’ve had experience with a major cloud provider, who wouldn’t budge until you mentioned “social media”. Which sucks on many levels - the more polite customer gets screwed over, and the impolite (and perhaps outright rude) gets reinforced to be more impolite sooner next time. Hobbes said that “man is a wolf to man”, and modern economy does its best to prove him right.
znpy 4y ago
I tweeted about my experience. Magically, HP support promptly contacted me and sent me replacements. You’ll only get results if you embarrass them publicly. This is the only actually useful reason why I keep a twitter account. Literally, the only actual value in twitter, as an user, is that if you embarrass a company publicly you'll get actual support. For everything twitter is pretty much worthless.
ksec 4y ago
I stand by what I wrote 9 months ago. [1] And it was probably the same 9 years before when I last had to deal with it. >I had to install a new inkjet printer because kids now need to print out their homework during COVID. >I swear to god if I ever become wealthy the printer industry is what I intended to completely destroy. Not in it for profit. Not positive sum whatever startup thinking. It will be Zero Sum. >Edit: Lasers are fine. That will be left alone. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30553662 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30553662

serf 4y ago

>I’ve purchased my last HP printer, but I fear each of their competitors is just as bad. you're probably right, but I purchased an Epson 'EcoTank' printer, black-and-white printing only & with a refillable ink hopper and couldn't be happier for simple document printing. The only gotcha i'm aware of is that they use this 'primer box' thing to squirt excess ink into during nozzle procedures that apparently will eventually fill up and require replacement, but I haven't heard of any need to do so after 3+ years of printing, so i'll count that as a win as compared to cartridge replacement which seemed to be a constant burden with our previous HP units.

kyrra 4y ago
I went with Epson as well after having a xerox laser printer for about a decade. The xerox allowed me to do aftermarket toner and it work decently well, but it's still had issues. Sadly a good laser printer, the toner is just far too expensive. When I was researching the Epson printers, I learned about pigment ink and how it doesn't smear with water like traditional inkjet printers did. It's worked really well for the last few years I've had it.
makeitdouble 4y ago
Sadly Epson is getting out of laser printer business [0], which to me signals they’ll be fully focusing on screwing users going forward. [0] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/epson-completes-business-mfp-range-130000031.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/epson-completes-business-mfp-...

liendolucas 4y ago

Another surprise is that if you want to use the printer over USB you have to purchase that cable *separately*. If you purchase online is very easy to fall for this one as people won't check for this, this happened to me around ~2 years ago with one of these low end pieces of crap.

pbhjpbhj 4y ago
Honestly, I prefer this, it seems to save millions of excess cables being sent to landfill ... a good company would allow you to order one free with the printer, or have a coupon in the box to get one for postage.
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  It's done to offer the office supply shops a bonus by giving them the extra sale of their ridiculously overpriced USB cables. They make more profit on those than on the printer itself as they're just cheap Chinese $1 cables. Another scam in this totally broken market.
ethbr0 4y ago
Is it a custom cable? Every one I've ever seen (in the USB era) is a standard Type B cable. https://www.newnex.com/usb-connector-type-guide.php https://www.newnex.com/usb-connector-type-guide.php
- account42 4y ago
  I never understood the reason for separate Type B connectors when the standard A, micro or now C-type connectors would work just as well and allow people to use the millions of cables of those they already have.
  - detaro 4y ago
    Pre-USB-C: USB A is host, USB B is device - be it normal-size-B or micro-size-B. Those should be the most common cables. (I'm not sure I'd have any standard-A-to-A?)

hoistbypetard 4y ago

> I fear each of their competitors is just as bad. I can't speak to current practices, as my current Brother printer is now 7 years old and is still on its second toner cartridge. It's a B&W laser with wifi, a duplexer, and whatever discovery stuff that iDevices need to find and print to it driverless. It replaced a very similar Brother printer that had gotten a solid 10 years of service, and which I chose to replace rather than repair when the fuser died mostly because I wanted the iDevice affordances. Both of those printers also worked smoothly from Linux desktops, too, thanks to pretty good PostScript emulation. Maybe they've gone to crap now, but I'm optimistic that if I needed another B&W laser, something like their current HL-2350DW or HL-2370DW would provide a similarly inexpensive, no-bullshit experience now. The thing that worked for me was giving up on color printing. The supplies for that are eye-wateringly expensive IMO, and I seldom really need it. Last time I had a color printer at home, it was an Epson ink jet of some description, and my color prints were so infrequent that sometimes the cartridge would dry out after a few dozen pages. And worst of all, it'd refuse to do B&W prints if one of the colors was dry. I decided I'd just go to Kinko's if I needed a color document, or to one of several drug stores that lets you print photos if I needed photos. Black and White lasers are stable. Taking apart my Brother, it is extremely similar to the Canon engines from the 1980s. Which were themselves extremely similar to photocopiers that have been in production since quite a bit earlier than that. B&W laser printing is such a well-solved problem, if you can stand to go with that you can save yourself a ton of aggravation and quite a bit of money.

Akronymus 4y ago
Brother is one of the VERY few companies I'd choose without thinking twice. At least in terms of printers. So far, only had good experiences. And now I realize that sounds like astroturfing.
- tailspin2019 4y ago
  Agreed. Brother (laser) printers are extremely reliable in my experience too. I’ve been using them for close to 20 years now. HP probably would have been my only other choice if/when I have to replace my superb (and crazy cheap) Brother B&W laser but after reading this post I will never go near HP printers again. Edit: just read about Brother’s nasty firmware update elsewhere in the comments here. Sigh. I guess I’ll just have to stop buying printers altogether.

xerxesaa 4y ago

I bought a Canon Maxify GX7020 a year ago and I've been quite happy with it. Ticks all the boxes of having printer, scanner, fax, and full duplex on both scanning and printing. Most importantly it uses ink tanks. They don't last as long as laser toner, but if you want an ink jet, it's great because there is no cartridge. You just fill it up with ink. I also stopped buying HP after I noticed all the scams they pull with their ink cartridges. As others have mentioned, a simple Brother printer is also a great option.

matheusmoreira 4y ago

> You’ll only get results if you embarrass them publicly. Tips on how to do this most effectively?

ethbr0 4y ago
Post on Usenet.

tjpnz 4y ago

>You see, ink in different regions is turned for the climate in that region, the support rep explained! I was dumbfounded at such a stupid explanation. If I had my fuck you money I'd get a lab to put that to the test and then instruct my high priced lawyer to serve papers. There must be consequences for telling blatant fibs like that.

thayne 4y ago
I don't think you need a lab. I'm pretty doubtful the region it is locked to would be smaller than the united states. And the US has several very different clomates. Just order ink from a few states with different climates, say florida, maine, arizona, etc. If they all work on a printer bought in the US, clearly climate isn't the reason. Or even just point out that by that logic, in many areas you should then need to use different ink in different seasons.
seanp2k2 4y ago
I wonder if they also have special cartridges for the southern hemisphere where documents print bottom to top.
- f1shy 4y ago
  Exactly maybe is not climate, but Coriolis effect on the toner.
  - BrandoElFollito 4y ago
    Don't be silly - the coriolis effect is way to small. It has been proven with the sink water turning clockwise experiments. This is clearly a quantum mechanics effect, of the less known ones. The same one that makes all alien land in the US (or at least this is what I saw in various documentaries)
emodendroket 4y ago
If so then every call center in America is ripe for lawsuit because they're just making shit up to placate you half the time.

emodendroket 4y ago

> I called HP support and they fed me an unbelievable story that this was for my own good. You see, ink in different regions is turned for the climate in that region, the support rep explained! I was dumbfounded at such a stupid explanation. [...] you are wasting your time bothering with normal support channels. I worked in a call center for 8 months and I'll tell you this is pretty much all of them. You call up and talk to a front-line agent who wasn't really clued in on the reasoning for anything and isn't empowered to do much that falls outside standard workflows. You might as well ask your friends why HP does something because he'll come up with an answer from as much information as the agent has. You might be able to escalate to somebody who actually has the power to make any kind of exception if you insist on it but that's definitely not the first layer.

oldgradstudent 4y ago

> I called HP support and they fed me an unbelievable story that this was for my own good. You see, ink in different regions is turned for the climate in that region, the support rep explained! I was dumbfounded at such a stupid explanation. I don't doubt their explanation for a moment. We all know the weather in Alaska and Florida is very similar, while the weather in London is completely different.

alexdbird 4y ago
Well, they're not going to tell you there's something in the US ink that's banned in the EU, or vice versa — this is purely an example of another type of explanation, of course.

mattkevan 4y ago

I had a similar experience where I discovered that the HP printer I’d bought from a major UK retailer had come with the wrong region ink and was now permanently locked to US cartridges. I’ll never give HP money for anything ever again.

userbinator 4y ago

The climate explanation is not entirely without basis, judging by the relative popularity of inkjets compared to lasers in (moist) Southeast Asia; but if that was the real reason rather than price differentiation, they should've been far more transparent with it. I know some cartridges also have expiry dates, which is at least somewhat more reasonable as ink does dry, but instead of being simply a label you read, they're encoded on the cartridge chip and the printer refuses to use them if they've expired.

MonkeyClub 4y ago

> You’ll only get results if you embarrass them publicly. This is sadly official common practice. I’ve had experience with a major cloud provider, who wouldn’t budge until you mentioned “social media”. Which sucks on many levels - the more polite customer gets screwed over, and the impolite (and perhaps outright rude) gets reinforced to be more impolite sooner next time. Hobbes said that “man is a wolf to man”, and modern economy does its best to prove him right.

znpy 4y ago

I tweeted about my experience. Magically, HP support promptly contacted me and sent me replacements. You’ll only get results if you embarrass them publicly. This is the only actually useful reason why I keep a twitter account. Literally, the only actual value in twitter, as an user, is that if you embarrass a company publicly you'll get actual support. For everything twitter is pretty much worthless.

ksec 4y ago

I stand by what I wrote 9 months ago. [1] And it was probably the same 9 years before when I last had to deal with it. >I had to install a new inkjet printer because kids now need to print out their homework during COVID. >I swear to god if I ever become wealthy the printer industry is what I intended to completely destroy. Not in it for profit. Not positive sum whatever startup thinking. It will be Zero Sum. >Edit: Lasers are fine. That will be left alone. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30553662 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30553662