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>What do you expect to happen when you sign up for the subscription ink? I would expect sufficient ink for the number of pages I signed up for to appear period

>What do you expect to happen when you sign up for the subscription ink? I would expect sufficient ink for the number of pages I signed up for to appear periodically until I have a large surplus, at which point I can either reduce my subscription, or cancel it. I wouldn't expect that ink to retroactively be bricked. Laser printers are far, far better in terms of consumables, as long as you avoid the very lowest cost units, and DRM hobbled units.

toast0 4y ago
Well, the sales page says you can rollover pages, but only until you have 3x your monthly alotment. The ink is only valid during your subscription period, like most other service subscriptions. When you cancel your phone, you don't to use the excess minutes. When you cancel your insurance, you don't get to make a claim for an event after the expiration date. It's 10 pages a month (or whatever plan you sign up for), so you didn't print and the month is done, so is your ink. You can put in a regular cartridge if you want regular rules, but $1/month to maybe print and they'll send more ink when it dries up seems like an ok deal to me? (Was better when it was free, but they got bills, I guess) Frankly, I don't expect ink cartridges to work after a month or two if I haven't printed anything, either. I'm happy with the color laser I got from CDW Outlet, but while discounted, it was still probably the cost of 4 inkjets and I don't know if I'll really use it enough to justify. But other than some duplexing oddities sometimes, it just works and that's really nice.
- josephcsible 4y ago
  > The ink is only valid during your subscription period, like most other subscriptions. Name one other subscription service that sends you physical stuff every month that they remotely disable all of when you cancel.
  - toast0 4y ago
    My milk subscription will come and pick up the delivery box if I cancel. And the milk will expire by the end of the month. My trash service will come and pick up the cans when I cancel service.
    - josephcsible 4y ago
      Do you get a new delivery box every month, and a new trash can every month, and get to keep all of the old ones indefinitely, but then have to return them all at once if you cancel? Does your milk normally not expire at all, but suddenly all expire at once when you stop getting more?
    - pbhjpbhj 4y ago
      If it were the same they'd come and get the delivery box and superglue the caps on any already delivered bottles of milk in your fridge.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - avianlyric 4y ago
    I’m not sure I see the relevance. I’m paying for a printing service, when I stop paying, I stop getting a printing service. The fact that there’s physical ink cartridges involved is neither here-nor-there. It’s a practical requirement, nothing else. Rental cars these days will disable themselves if you don’t return at the of the rental. The SIM card in your phone stops working when the subscription ends etc etc. There are plenty of services involving physical assets that stop working when you stop paying. Also how much printing do you do? I get an ink cartridge maybe once a year.
    - kuschku 4y ago
      If I pay for a subscription for e.g. food delivery, I get something delivered every n days. If I stop paying, they don't come back and steal all the previously delivered but unused parts either. What the average consumer expects from a service like instant ink is "a subscription for new ink cartridges when needed" and not "a subscription for individual pages". With my SIM card, that's actually the case, too: It's prepaid, but with an automatic recharge of 8€/month. Money that's not used stays on the card, forever.
      - randac 4y ago
        If you pay for a subscription to Audible and accrue monthly credits, they will steal the unused ones back when you cancel the subscription. Not making a judgement either way, just adding more data.
      - avianlyric 4y ago
        > What the average consumer expects from a service like instant ink is "a subscription for new ink cartridges when needed" and not "a subscription for individual pages". Obviously not. You’ve paid for food delivery, you got what you paid for, why would they take it back? It’s not like you’re paying for cooked meals. > What the average consumer expects from a service like instant ink is "a subscription for new ink cartridges when needed" and not "a subscription for individual pages". Have you ever read or tried to signup for the service? Literally everything is priced per page. A no point do they say you’re getting a subscription ink service, it’s quite explicitly a per page printing service. I’m sorry, but you bought a service that clearly sold and priced as “$X per month for Y printed pages”, and misinterpret that as “$X per month, for Y ink”, then that’s on you.
  - jtrtoo 4y ago
    They don't send you stuff every month. You pay a fixed monthly price for a certain number of pages of whatever color/quality you want along with some page count rollover benefits. You no longer buy cartridges. The printer phones home when the cartridge runs low (well before that based on their proprietary predictive algorithm) and a new one arrives soon thereafter automatically. It's not like you have more than 1-2 cartridges at a time. And you never pay for them in any case. Incidentally you can still install standard (non-subscription tied - e.g. bought at Costco) cartridges and the subscription status is then irrelevant (but of course you pay for those cartridges so they're yours to do with as you please unlike the rented subscription ones), but that's not the point (for the most part). I find it handy for super low volume printing needs at home.
- leni536 4y ago
  > The ink is only valid... The ink is what?
  - toast0 4y ago
    You're paying $1 for 10 pages of printing a month. Stop paying, no printing. (They have larger plans, too, but if you're printing 50 pages a month, I'd bet the regular cartridges work well and don't dry up). Don't want to pay for subscription ink? No problem, get the regular ink. Have some account problem and can't pay for subscription ink, you can still get regular ink and use that (subject to the usual inkjet printer woes that come with not printing much). Seems like leasing a car and complaining you're expected to return it after the lease.
    - josephcsible 4y ago
      > Seems like leasing a car and complaining you're expected to return it after the lease. If instead of giving the car back so they can resell it, you had to crush it or replace the engine oil with sodium silicate, then you'd be absolutely right to complain. Useful things should never intentionally be forced to become waste just to protect a business model.
      - alias_neo 4y ago
        Hear hear. All the while, we as individuals are pushed harder and harder to be more efficient, more environmentally conscious and less wasteful. How about super markets stop selling peeled oranges in plastic packaging?
        staunton 4y ago
        > How about super markets stop selling peeled oranges in plastic packaging? Wow that's actually a thing in the US... mind blown
        rascul 4y ago
- bayindirh 4y ago
  > I don't expect ink cartridges to work after a month or two if I haven't printed anything, either. I have a Deskjet 4515 for a decade or so. I use regular ink cartridges with it, and even if I don't print anything for three months, it just prints fine. Sometimes a couple of nozzles get clogged, but printing or a quick clean restores them to perfect order. When you're printing in "Normal" quality, these clogs are tolerated somehow, so you don't see the degradation in the quality either. Modern HP printers came a very long way since 500C/550C days. These are resilient machines now, even if they're made to home-duty level of robustness. HP may have many quirks and unethical practices around ink, but ink quality and machine resilience are not two of them.
  - Chyzwar 4y ago
    What you are not telling is that TCO for HP printer is an order of magnitude higher than a laser printer from Brother.
    - bayindirh 4y ago
      Well considering all the HP printers I gave away sans one were working perfectly, and it worked with any OS I ever used, I'll pay the difference in terms of reliability and experience. The first one was given away because I got a Canon bubblejet for free, and that was really unreliable and expensive. I got my second HP with my money, and gave it away for a HP scanner/printer combo which again I got free with a laptop purchase. The one I broke was this combo, which was worn away in a decade. I probably used it beyond its designated life, and it was a bottom of the barrel machine. Then, I got the 4515 I'm using now, with my own money, again. I'd have said the same thing for Samsung lasers, but they have stopped making them. I'm hoarding some spares for mine. These things are also built like tanks. They were jointly built with Xerox, so they were something. I'm not a person who replaces all IT equipment every year, and I'll accept a higher TCO if I can keep the machine for a longer time, and can buy its spares for a considerable amount of time. Also, as a person who mingled with inks and printers for a long time, I'd not buy off-brand ink for my devices. It just doesn't worth it. P.S.: I don't like color lasers for printing out documents I plan to work on, because the triple-baking process makes the paper shiny, and the paper becomes less than ideal to take notes or markup. A B&W laser is perfect for papers and other stuff, and inkjet is perfect for color documents which I want to read and work-on. Plus it's a decent quality photo printer, too. I take photos and printing them and gifting them is great. People love it.

toast0 4y ago

Well, the sales page says you can rollover pages, but only until you have 3x your monthly alotment. The ink is only valid during your subscription period, like most other service subscriptions. When you cancel your phone, you don't to use the excess minutes. When you cancel your insurance, you don't get to make a claim for an event after the expiration date. It's 10 pages a month (or whatever plan you sign up for), so you didn't print and the month is done, so is your ink. You can put in a regular cartridge if you want regular rules, but $1/month to maybe print and they'll send more ink when it dries up seems like an ok deal to me? (Was better when it was free, but they got bills, I guess) Frankly, I don't expect ink cartridges to work after a month or two if I haven't printed anything, either. I'm happy with the color laser I got from CDW Outlet, but while discounted, it was still probably the cost of 4 inkjets and I don't know if I'll really use it enough to justify. But other than some duplexing oddities sometimes, it just works and that's really nice.

josephcsible 4y ago
> The ink is only valid during your subscription period, like most other subscriptions. Name one other subscription service that sends you physical stuff every month that they remotely disable all of when you cancel.
- toast0 4y ago
  My milk subscription will come and pick up the delivery box if I cancel. And the milk will expire by the end of the month. My trash service will come and pick up the cans when I cancel service.
  - josephcsible 4y ago
    Do you get a new delivery box every month, and a new trash can every month, and get to keep all of the old ones indefinitely, but then have to return them all at once if you cancel? Does your milk normally not expire at all, but suddenly all expire at once when you stop getting more?
  - pbhjpbhj 4y ago
    If it were the same they'd come and get the delivery box and superglue the caps on any already delivered bottles of milk in your fridge.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- avianlyric 4y ago
  I’m not sure I see the relevance. I’m paying for a printing service, when I stop paying, I stop getting a printing service. The fact that there’s physical ink cartridges involved is neither here-nor-there. It’s a practical requirement, nothing else. Rental cars these days will disable themselves if you don’t return at the of the rental. The SIM card in your phone stops working when the subscription ends etc etc. There are plenty of services involving physical assets that stop working when you stop paying. Also how much printing do you do? I get an ink cartridge maybe once a year.
  - kuschku 4y ago
    If I pay for a subscription for e.g. food delivery, I get something delivered every n days. If I stop paying, they don't come back and steal all the previously delivered but unused parts either. What the average consumer expects from a service like instant ink is "a subscription for new ink cartridges when needed" and not "a subscription for individual pages". With my SIM card, that's actually the case, too: It's prepaid, but with an automatic recharge of 8€/month. Money that's not used stays on the card, forever.
    - randac 4y ago
      If you pay for a subscription to Audible and accrue monthly credits, they will steal the unused ones back when you cancel the subscription. Not making a judgement either way, just adding more data.
    - avianlyric 4y ago
      > What the average consumer expects from a service like instant ink is "a subscription for new ink cartridges when needed" and not "a subscription for individual pages". Obviously not. You’ve paid for food delivery, you got what you paid for, why would they take it back? It’s not like you’re paying for cooked meals. > What the average consumer expects from a service like instant ink is "a subscription for new ink cartridges when needed" and not "a subscription for individual pages". Have you ever read or tried to signup for the service? Literally everything is priced per page. A no point do they say you’re getting a subscription ink service, it’s quite explicitly a per page printing service. I’m sorry, but you bought a service that clearly sold and priced as “$X per month for Y printed pages”, and misinterpret that as “$X per month, for Y ink”, then that’s on you.
- jtrtoo 4y ago
  They don't send you stuff every month. You pay a fixed monthly price for a certain number of pages of whatever color/quality you want along with some page count rollover benefits. You no longer buy cartridges. The printer phones home when the cartridge runs low (well before that based on their proprietary predictive algorithm) and a new one arrives soon thereafter automatically. It's not like you have more than 1-2 cartridges at a time. And you never pay for them in any case. Incidentally you can still install standard (non-subscription tied - e.g. bought at Costco) cartridges and the subscription status is then irrelevant (but of course you pay for those cartridges so they're yours to do with as you please unlike the rented subscription ones), but that's not the point (for the most part). I find it handy for super low volume printing needs at home.
leni536 4y ago
> The ink is only valid... The ink is what?
- toast0 4y ago
  You're paying $1 for 10 pages of printing a month. Stop paying, no printing. (They have larger plans, too, but if you're printing 50 pages a month, I'd bet the regular cartridges work well and don't dry up). Don't want to pay for subscription ink? No problem, get the regular ink. Have some account problem and can't pay for subscription ink, you can still get regular ink and use that (subject to the usual inkjet printer woes that come with not printing much). Seems like leasing a car and complaining you're expected to return it after the lease.
  - josephcsible 4y ago
    > Seems like leasing a car and complaining you're expected to return it after the lease. If instead of giving the car back so they can resell it, you had to crush it or replace the engine oil with sodium silicate, then you'd be absolutely right to complain. Useful things should never intentionally be forced to become waste just to protect a business model.
    - alias_neo 4y ago
      Hear hear. All the while, we as individuals are pushed harder and harder to be more efficient, more environmentally conscious and less wasteful. How about super markets stop selling peeled oranges in plastic packaging?
      - staunton 4y ago
        > How about super markets stop selling peeled oranges in plastic packaging? Wow that's actually a thing in the US... mind blown
        rascul 4y ago
bayindirh 4y ago
> I don't expect ink cartridges to work after a month or two if I haven't printed anything, either. I have a Deskjet 4515 for a decade or so. I use regular ink cartridges with it, and even if I don't print anything for three months, it just prints fine. Sometimes a couple of nozzles get clogged, but printing or a quick clean restores them to perfect order. When you're printing in "Normal" quality, these clogs are tolerated somehow, so you don't see the degradation in the quality either. Modern HP printers came a very long way since 500C/550C days. These are resilient machines now, even if they're made to home-duty level of robustness. HP may have many quirks and unethical practices around ink, but ink quality and machine resilience are not two of them.
- Chyzwar 4y ago
  What you are not telling is that TCO for HP printer is an order of magnitude higher than a laser printer from Brother.
  - bayindirh 4y ago
    Well considering all the HP printers I gave away sans one were working perfectly, and it worked with any OS I ever used, I'll pay the difference in terms of reliability and experience. The first one was given away because I got a Canon bubblejet for free, and that was really unreliable and expensive. I got my second HP with my money, and gave it away for a HP scanner/printer combo which again I got free with a laptop purchase. The one I broke was this combo, which was worn away in a decade. I probably used it beyond its designated life, and it was a bottom of the barrel machine. Then, I got the 4515 I'm using now, with my own money, again. I'd have said the same thing for Samsung lasers, but they have stopped making them. I'm hoarding some spares for mine. These things are also built like tanks. They were jointly built with Xerox, so they were something. I'm not a person who replaces all IT equipment every year, and I'll accept a higher TCO if I can keep the machine for a longer time, and can buy its spares for a considerable amount of time. Also, as a person who mingled with inks and printers for a long time, I'd not buy off-brand ink for my devices. It just doesn't worth it. P.S.: I don't like color lasers for printing out documents I plan to work on, because the triple-baking process makes the paper shiny, and the paper becomes less than ideal to take notes or markup. A B&W laser is perfect for papers and other stuff, and inkjet is perfect for color documents which I want to read and work-on. Plus it's a decent quality photo printer, too. I take photos and printing them and gifting them is great. People love it.