another reason why I'm never buying Hewlett-Packard again.

[Big Chudungus]

H-P printer not printing, typically needs some special sequence of PC booting, then printer booting etc.

After some fiddling I open the "Printer doctor" program to see WTF is with the cryptic error lights.

"Problem with your payment method for H-P Ink" that I've never used but got talked into them dinging a credit card $6/month or WTF. Still shows about 1/2 full of ink, but they decided to remote shut me down without even a warning.

Now I've gotta spend some quality time on phone to Bombay to figure out how to cancel that 'account' and hopefully get their curse off my printer.

Last I heard H-P CEO is some mystery meat foreign guy without any real high tech background, just knocked around various corps doing MBA management stuff. Prior CEO was some Australian guy who had to resign suddenly for some unknown reason.

Brother printers of Japan has an all Japanese management group that all came up from tech trenches at that company. Had a couple Brother printers and never had to deal with any Customer Service, ever, just followed the "Quick Start" flyer. This will be about 4th time with this H-P printer. At least I've got all 3 serial etc numbers already wrote down on tape plastered to it so I don't have to flip it over to read to CS.

[Dan_Eastvale]

This guy tells that HP limits to an incredibly very few prints for a basic subscription. Plenty of ink remaining or not.

About four years ago I purchased an HP Instant Ink compatible printer and a monthly HP instant ink subscription. At the time, like most people, I only needed to print out a handful of things each month for work and my art business. I was the ?perfect? target customer for HP Instant Ink service.


The way the HP Instant Ink subscription works is that you sign up for a certain amount of prints you are allowed to print each month. If you don?t use all of them, they roll over to the next month (for free). If you happen to go over your monthly allowance, your credit card gets charged for each print you make. I can?t remember the specific cost for each print but it is similar to how much it would cost at your local print/ copy center.

I paid for my Instant Ink subscription for over four years. Over those four years, I amassed a surplus of over 300 ?free? pages. HP makes it easy to see how many pages you have left each month so I planned on using those 300 pages to print some zines and business cards I would be tabling at.

A couple of weeks before the show, I popped in the new ink cartridge HP had sent me. After about 20 prints the ink ran out. I contacted HP and told them the ink ran out and that I had about 300 rollover pages I wanted to use. They agreed to send me two additional ink cartridges free of cost to print my project. When those ink cartridges arrived, They too only lasted for a handful of prints.

By this time the art show was only a couple of days away so so I went to my local office supply store and purchased official HP ink cartridges for my HP printer. I popped my new store-bought cartridges into my printer and something strange happened. After a couple of prints, my printer stopped printing. I looked at the small screen and it displayed a message that said my ink cartridges were not ?HP Instant Ink? and my printer REFUSED TO PRINT USING HP BRAND INK.


To sum up this sh*t show: I paid HP for FOUR years and amassed hundreds of ?free? prints only to not be able to actually print them. Then when I purchased official HP INK at an additional cost, HP used some weird Big Brother technology to cripple my HP brand printer when I needed it the most.

Needless to say, this whole situation was gross. I am way too busy to dedicate an afternoon trash-talking a product but I was so upset and let down and screwed by HP. The fact that they remotely lobotomized my printer was just downright wrong. Oh, and to add insult to injury, it took me many attempts and over two billing cycles to actually cancel my service with Instant Ink after this fiasco.

[Preston-CLB]

Inkjet printer cartridges, no matter whose are a gigantic money pit.

I've has HP color and Epson inkjet printers that would clog at the drop of a hat--any hat, when making any size print. These issues cost me a lot of time and money getting them resolved. I finally gave up on them and got an HP LaserJet (black only) and it works great.

I am no longer doing color printing, but if I was, I'd go with a Laserjet, or have the done commercially.
-P

[Ora Serrata]

I’ve had a few HP printers over the years. When they work they work well but that’s been as little as a year and as long as 4 years. I’ve had much better luck with Brothers.

[mycrstuff]

Don't buy ink jet buy a laser printer. I bought an HP ink jet to use as a scanner. It was cheap $99. Where they get you is the ink drys out quickly and you need to replace the cartridges to scan. I got a new scanner and threw the HP ink jet out.

[ldsnet]

I always thought their software and drivers were garbage, come to find out those were features!
HP requires you to have an HP account and an internet connection for the scanner function to work? No thank you! Yet that is what was necessary to get a scanner to work correctly!

[Big Chudungus]

Back when I had my old Brother MFC big *** all in one, and was printing lots of text-books etc from PDFs, I soon got tired of Ink costs and started refilling them myself and it worked great until I'd not print for a few months and they'd get dried out. Bit messy but no big and its not permanent ink by means.

This H-P Instant Ink is another "you will own nothing and be happy", since I guess you don't own your printer even long after warranty. I'm guessing as long as its HPII you can't even buy Inks for it yourself and plug them in.

Main part of my battles with H-P customer service was that it ONLY wants to connect via my home router, wont even work with USB or other cable or Bluetooth. But supposedly I can print remotely from my phone or something.


They did admit it has a "known bug" requiring certain boot up sequence to connect. I've got Windows PCs, not some odd Linux.

[Big Chudungus]

I always thought their software and drivers were garbage, come to find out those were features!
HP requires you to have an HP account and an internet connection for the scanner function to work? No thank you! Yet that is what was necessary to get a scanner to work correctly!

Any HP computer/laptop comes with 10x as much bloatware pre-installed "Let us run your life" garbage software as other brands.

[2shotjoe]

I have my eye on this DRM free brother color laser printer. You can use 3rd party toner, they don't care. I just don't have the extra 329.99 for it now. I really don't need it at the moment, I'll just print at work most of the time.

Brother HL-L3290CDW Wireless Color Laser Printer https://a.co/d/eDy9rqb

Sent from my SM-S926U using Tapatalk

[C.G.]

They really ticked me off when they disallowed third-party ink cartridges through an update. Now they are talking subscription only within a couple of years. Goodbye HP.

[Dan_Eastvale]

Don't buy ink jet buy a laser printer. I bought an HP ink jet to use as a scanner. It was cheap $99. Where they get you is the ink drys out quickly and you need to replace the cartridges to scan. I got a new scanner and threw the HP ink jet out.

Good thing is there are good color lasers (Brother) that scan also now.

Will be my next printer

[command_liner]

Not long ago I worked at HP. My software has been used to print a trillion inkjet pages. The Instant-Ink program was developed here in Corvallis, where the inkjet printhead was invented. The program is there to make it so one can reliably print pages. It is not a cost minimization tool.

The CEO came out of a group in Barcelona I worked with, and when the Harvard affirmative action case was decided, he lamented that it was not a good decision and he had personally benefitted from the idea of affirmative action. He is an OK guy and I got along well enough with him.

The layers of DEI and BS are some of the reasons I no longer work at HP.

[Big Chudungus]

update H-P printer Custom Service drama.

35min of quality phone time. Found out HP Inks I already bought and still new in package will not work unless I paid outstanding balance ransom.

Supposedly if I buy other inks on my own they will work. Cancelled my acccount of course, but not message about 'can't find on network' pops up and its one of those that wont let you copy the text.

Seems this printer ONLY wants to work through router, even if USB connected which even H-P says is "known bug" with....wait for it....Windows 7,10 and 11.

[JohnCCW]

https://youtu.be/Nukki3mDSsk?si=TpQ4Pe7rAIA1RBnY

[Featureless]

Anyone who uses ink printers from any manufacturer is, well, let's just say they're clueless. The purpose of ink printers is not so that you, the consumer, can actually print stuff. the purpose of ink printers is to sell naive people ink cartridges. If you actually want to print stuff buy a laser printer.