HP printer with ink DRM gets "environmentally friendly" stamp of approval 😞 

EPEAT is like every other Greenpeace want to be nonsense companies. They don't care about the environment. If you give them enough money you can call yourself green. As proof I submit to you the fact that Apple Inc. is not only on the list, but is on the highest Gold tier standing. Seeing as Apple promotes throw away culture and sales everything including chargers separately further adding to waste. Clearly EPEAT is taking bribes.

At this point it's so blatant and deliberate, the person doing the "environmentally-friendly" product design and marketing must be a psychopath laughing in his head at how ridiculous his job is.

Such practices are basically ransomware. I find it creepy and infuriating to have control over my own things snatched away like that. Thanks for spreading awareness about these foul and immoral business models

Used to work for HP. Yes, they are an evil company. Edit: Didn't expect this to blow up. For more context, HP would prefer (force) their customer would purchase new printers if shit hits the fan than giving them an actual repair. HP is the type of company that if something's broken, would give you their basic troubleshooting first. If none of that works, then they'll check if you have a warranty or not. If you have a warranty, they'll replace your printer with a refurbished one. If you don't then you're screwed and you have to buy a new printer. These new printers are typically the one that are with subscription as described in Louis Video. I apologize for giving less context on this. If you only knew about their profit margins with their inks, you'll be disgusted. Glad I left this company.

All of this happened to me within the past 6 months. I bought a HP printer/scanner a few years ago and had to sign up for their ink replenishing service ($3.10 per month) and I thought it was worth it since it was a business expense. I would only print MAYBE 5 pages a month if that. So then I cancelled the service thinking that the service didn't outweigh the very few times I would need it for new ink, and then my printer stopped working saying that ink was low and I had to replace the cartridges. I get new HP ink cartridges and the printer still didn't work saying that the ink cartridges were low and needed to be replaced. I return the ink cartridges and get new ones and get the same low ink message, and then I return more ink cartridges and get different new ones, and still get the same message. I call HP support about this and they ask for the serial number and tell me that my HP printer is a few years old, the warranty had expired and that they can't do anything about it. I think fine, nothing lasts forever and then go and get a new HP printer but don't sign up for their service as I was asked multiple times if I would from the clerk at the store and also so many emails about signing up. I have not signed up and the printer/scanner is working, but it has been less than a year. I, like so many others, didn't think I had to read any 'fine print' about "purchasing" a printer. If you HAVE to sign up for some kind of service subscription to use a device, that's not a purchase, that is renting a device and I wish I knew that before now. Thanks for this video Louis, and YES, I did learn something.

03:20 - You do not own this printer.

Unfortunately 90% of customers aren't that tech-savvy and don't know what kind of problems they will run into after purchasing an HP printer.

HP wasn't always like this. I own HP LJ 1000w printer back from ~2001 , it still works just fine and allow any 3rd party cartridges to be installed... But at some point they really switched to the the dark side, starting making unreliable products and restricting their customers to original supplies...

The great scam

I sold and repaired printers for two years, Brother is absolutely the way to go. About 80% of the HP printers I sold came back for return because of defects or frustration with the setup. Never had a problem with a Brother that I sold that wasn't user error or a worn out part.

I switched to a Brother HL-3180CDW years ago. I have hated HP products (especially printers) for longer, and this just cements my commitment NOT to support them in ANY way. You are NOT being 'bombastic'. Please keep informing people of these low life companies! Thanks Louis!

The worst part is, is that I think if anyone were to sue HP over the claims, they would just say something along the lines of "well, when we produced it it accepted all kinds of ink, then allowed the user to remove that feature as outlined in our GT&Cs". Worse yet, the court might actually rule in their favor, I'm afraid.

Hey, Louis! I just wanted to share my story with a HP printer "hp deskjet plus 4120". I had that thing for about 2 years and only bought original ink. It was already very annoying that I had to connect to the internet to get basic functionality, such as scanning a page, I'm not kidding. After about 2 years, I had to buy new black ink that always ran out after printing about 20-30% the advertised amount. I checked the app, which told me that I can buy a larger cartridge called "307XL". I went to the electronics store, found it, put it in the printer and got an error message. Turns out it actually isn't supported, despite what the app said. I can send you a picture to confirm this. But that's not all, the printer would not work again after this, even with the old cartridge. I tried it multiple times. That means HP deliberately told me to buy the wrong product and then deactivated my device. I tried to get a refund at the store, but they said "HP does not give us any money, we cannot take it back". I tried contacting HP about, although it said there was a guarantee on the product, it did let me register it. So I tried brute-forcing my way through the AI support, but with no warranty, I would have to pay for the call. At that point I gave up. Disappointed and with the feeling that I was robbed, I tossed my printer in the thrash. Never again will I buy anything from this company.

Extremely cringe 💀 and after watching more of this video, I’m definitely going to buy a brother printer instead

A few years ago I bought myself an Epson EcoTank printer (which has ink bottles to fill the ink compartments with), it was one of the most expensive inkjet printers I ever bought. But I am still using the ink that came with the machine. And the inkbottles themselves are cheaper than regular cartridges. And it's a lot easier to find third party ones.

I would love to have a printer. It would be soooo handy to be able to print things. But printer manufacturers have made it clear that they dont want me to have one.

Here in Germany HP issued an OTA update for many different kinds of their printers, in our household two were influenced: A cheap deskjet ink printer and an expensive laserjet laser printer. The updates were forced in a way that you could not access the GUI if you did not click on "install update", it was softlocked under this message. After we did, suspecting nothing bad, they stopped working. From now on, they always showed the errors 49 or 79 and completely refused to do anything. No workaround would work for us. In the end, we threw away perfectly fine working, not very old machines (just out of 2 years of warranty that is mandated in Germany). The laserjet even had brand new cartridges in it. HP is a malignant corporation. Please, I don't want to hear any "fixes" that I could have applied to solve the errors. I did absolutely anything that was suggested anywhere.

I have a 10+ year old Brother printer/scanner that still works like a champ. It rarely jams, and when it does it's trivial to un-jam. The body of the printer is made from plastic that feels about as sturdy as a stale tortilla but so far nothing has broken. Brother is pretty weird, with a million different models for no clear reason, but the things work.

HP already has a plan that I think is worse. They call it "instant Ink". It's a subscription plan that monitors the printers ink levels and ships new cartridges before they run out. For the customer, it eliminates worries over running out of ink. Instead, HP has substituted worrying about your monthly page count. The subscription charge is based on the number of pages you print each month. If you exceed the limit, your printer stops printing until the next month, or until you upgrade your subscription to a higher monthly count. I don't know how rigorous HP is about assuring customers can always keep printing, but I'll bet they make damn sure they receive the subscription payments.

Thank you Louis for keeping up the good fight

Love my brother printer. Mine was about 6 years old when it died and I printed a lot of documents for my repair shop. Since I was happy with the one I had, I just ordered another one. My uncle also uses them HEAVILY in his dealership. They seem to last quite a while and they work fairly well with third party toner.

HP made an all-in-one printer that I used for years back in the 90's. The only reason I had to stop using it was that the teeth on the plastic gear that moved the print head mechanism wore off. I tried other HP printers but none of them had the durability and reliability of that original printer. I have a 5-year-old Epson now and will be looking to replace it soon. This video certainly gave me some valuable information that I can use in my next purchase decision. Thanks for posting these videos.

I've worked on computers, electronics and printers for so long and in fact, I work in IT. I used to work for a company that had HP inkjet printers that would fail left and right, between buying ink toners, printheads and new printers the insanity is through the roof. The same company had HP laser printers from the 90's up and running with no issues. A family member wanted to buy a printer and asked which one to get, they did not need color prints and after research, paid $200-ish dollars for a Brother laser printer that will as I'm confident be a workhorse where an inkjet printer will need to be replaced dozens of times, not only hurting the wallet but adding to ewaste

I think you can say this for ALL printer manufacturers. I do not have any proof to back it up as I can't look in the firmware, but I was working in a store, and I kept getting a lot of Epson Ecotank printers of various models in with "Weak print, striped lines" etc etc fault messages. Common denominator? They all were around 200-250 pages printed of various ages, from a couple of months to a little over a year old. Only fix was to run the "Pressure clean" program on the printer and then it would magically work again, it does consume a bit of ink, but what's worse, it eats out of the consumer's waste ink cartridge or one time use pad. In other words, you get the ink for cheap, but if you use it, the printer will either charge you extra (Waste ink cartridges) or if you bought the entry model, force you to buy a new one as the waste ink pad that you can't change / reset is inside the printer (And firmware locked, meaning changing the pad physically isn't possible, as it will remember the amount of uses.) What we need is an Open Source printer, either toner or ink based where we control the firmware at this point.

After fussing about and failing with aftermarket inks on my HP injket printer, I bought a basic Brother Laser printer for my home office and it has been a game changer. So happy with it.

I used to clean the kitchen venthoods at their HQ, they was the only place that made us take the water we used to clean them with us because for some reason dumping a block away was better than it going down the drain like every other place.

HP deskjet 2135 was the one my family bought in 2015-16 and it worked great, even working with manually recharged ink. In 2017 HP rolled an stealthy firmware update to make it check for something (I'm not sure if it is a sensor or a serial number) in the cartridge to force a color test print, thus giving it the exact ink level inside; so what would happen is that the printer would know when you refill it AND ALSO *punish you* for the ink you added, even with an brand new official cartridge! we tried 2 times and the stupid thing wasted half the ink on an automatic color test! even when connected to the internet!. Last time we tried to use it was in 2020 with some recharged cartridge and it simply decided to let the cartridge spill out in its entirety. After that, it never printed anything again - the firmware commands the printer to slide the paper, move the cart holder and spit it out...without applying any pressure nor ink to the paper. I've found many people online sharing this experience with the entire deskjet line, some even citing news articles about HP reversing this in 2018 and *re-implementing it in 2019*, so I think it is fair to say that not only do we not own these things - the ones we used to own, they will steal as well

I bought an Epson EcoTank printer. It cost more upfront but the ink comes in bottles and costs next to noting to replace. My wife prints a LOT of stuff for work and it has been the best thing we have done so far. In the long run it is much cheaper

My workplace threw all their commercial-grade, closet-sized laser printers out and replaced them with Lexmark’s. Magically, downtime was drastically reduced. I rarely had any glitches with Lexmark whereas HP’s had glitches every other week. I don’t know if any of HP’s consumer or commercial products don’t suck.

I don't print a whole lot, but the printer I do have is an old trusty HP Laserjet P1006. It accepts whatever kind of toner I give it, and has worked perfectly for something like 15 years now. From what I hear, it'll probably also be the _last_ HP printer I ever get…

Thank you for using your large platform to bring these companies to task and to shame their bad practices.

This is exactly why inkjet printers are too much of a headache to bother with. Personally, I only own monochrome laser printers, and go to a store if I need physical photos or something in color.

What we need is a new printer company that takes a truly repair-focused stance. - Designed to be repaired from the ground up - Compatible with existing ink / toner / whatever - Fully open-source firmware that you can compile and flash yourself

The good old "environmentally friendly" scam 😂 Theres a lot of suckers out there

Thank you Louis for talking about this topic. All too often companies get away with shady business practices because it's hidden in the fine print.

I worked at Office Depot for years. They pushed us pretty hard to sell the Instant Ink service with our printers. This makes me sick to know how many I sold, especially when I found out later that they were frequently sending people ink faster than they could use it; they charge you for each cartridge they send, albeit at an ever so slightly reduced price.

You’ve done a great job with right to repair, next we need a bill that protects consumers where any information sent from a dice should A) be disclosed on the packaging and B) have the ability to be disabled via a menu, so consumers can opt out.

A few months ago a woman with a Phd made a post about how she had read the service contract before she signed up for their auto refill service. After a year she realized she wasn't printing that much and decided to cancel the service. So you pay for them to monitor your ink usage and when you need ink they charge you for it and then ship it. So a week or so after canceling the service, she went to print something and got a massage telling her that since she no longer had the service, the ink, that she had paid for was no longer active and would need to be replaced. The reason they gave her was that the ink was sold at a lower price through the service. They offered no way to pay the difference, but told her that if she went back to the monthly service they would reauthorize her ink.

Since 2005 me, family members and everyone asking for recommendations have only bought Brothers printers. They are far from perfect, but at least they are free of all this DRM crap.

THIS is the way to tank a company right here folks. Just when you think HP couldn't get more slimy, they go and pull this shit. 😆 _and yes, Brother 🏅printer owner._

I bought my printer in 2017, it worked so well until 2021. After that HP has bent over backwards to make it unusable. At this point, I go to the library and pay 10 cents per page. I only ever used actual HP ink cartridges, but I bought them from Wal-Mart instead of from HP and that just made HP so damn mad, that they've stopped my printer from working because they aren't from Instant Ink. Me spending $30 less for ink just chapped HP's ass.

i used to work at hp, making their early inkjet cartridges. they were raking in so much money, inkjet held up all their other divisions like medical and computers. i think it was the only profit. and funny fact, remember them announcing a new internal network security named S.A.T.A.N. I'm completely serious.

I worked at Cartridge World for like six years or so. I truly hope I live to see the day HP goes out of business. They've been doing this for YEARS. The first firmware update I recall locking people out of using aftermarket cartridges was about a decade ago. I can't recall the printer, but the cartridges were HP 95's. OfficeJet 6310's maybe? Either way, a LONG time ago. HP 920 cartridges did this exact same thing. I hate HP with a fiery passion. I work for a government entity, and we're moving away from HP as quickly as possible. There are thousands of computers and printers in our organization, and HP isn't getting that business anymore. Brother has done some shifty stuff too, but far less than every other manufacturer.

Thanks for the heads up. I have always been an HP user but I dont want them to try to control me with a stupid printer. I only want to print out a few documents or scan a paper thats it. I dont need all of that other stuff or sign up for anything or be told what to do and spied on

If you outright NEED a color inkjet printer, just get one of those Epson printers with the refillable ink tanks.

I think videos like this are fantastic to throw at people who are blissfully ignorant of predatory practices across the board, so I hope you continue to make them as long as I know you. It creates real activism among huge ranks of people when you simply describe what a company is doing on it's face, because it's pretty clear all of these companies are going to unscrupulously lie and manipulate consumers if they can get away with it. Just look at AI shit.

Happy to see another video from you. Keep up the good work and fight. We are so full of you will own nothing and you will be happy and everything as a service/rental. To add insult to injury, it's a slap in the face that it says environment friendly while producing more E Waste. Hope they get removed

You have thoroughly convinced me never to buy an HP printer. 🤔 Thank you for your advice.

Thank you. I own a Canon MB5420 multifunction printer and totally love it.

Hi Louis. You've missed the worst part of this! I'm in Europe. When I was shopping for a printer they were calling this service "instant ink" and bundling it with new printers for "one month free". I did some research and bought a Canon printer. While they have this "free" option that lets you use "Non-OEM cartridges" - but this isn't really true either. If you use a non HP cartridge, you cannot start a print job without it advertising the Instant Ink program to you first. Basically If the printer does not detect an HP cartridge, before it prints anything, it prints an advert for the program! So... if you want to print a single line of text out of the printer, you must first (you cannot turn this off) print a FULL PAGE FULL COLOUR GLOSSY ADVERT for their instant ink system. This means you cannot effectively "opt out" of the OEM cartridge program, unless you want to use 90% of your colour ink on HP adverts. ----- The instant ink program is also garbage! when you pay your subscription, you have to guess how many pages per month you want to print, and you pay for that many pages worth of ink, whether you use them or not. If you guess high, then you're paying a much higher cost than you would have for ink cartridges. If you guess low, then your printer shuts down and refuses to print unless you pay for more pages at a massive premium... It doesn't matter if it has ink in it or not, you used up your quota, so the product makes itself useless. It's clear *why* HP want a system like this - unless the user knows exactly how often and how much they use the printer months in advance (and also changes the subscription regularly to reflect changing use) they get to charge you significantly more than you'd have paid for just buying regular cartridges.

This is why I do all my printing at the library 📚 So much easier to pay 20 cents per black and white print than it is to buy $50 ink cartridges and $100 printers 🖨️

Totally agree. I saw an Epson printer a while back that was touting refillable cartridges from bottles of ink. I wonder how well those work. Now that seems to be an environment friendly product.

Every HP product I have had has been trash. Printers, laptops, etc. Just my experience. But I bet I'm not alone.

I remember a couple of years ago the ACCC here in Australia fined both HP and Epson for not making it clear at point of purchase (i.e. not printed on the box or manual) that their printers would not work with non-original cartridges. It cost them millions and buyers were compensated.

My late mother was the newsletter editor for a Scottish clan society/social group, and it was also her responsibility to print these newsletters. And it was complicated by the need for A3 paper size support. This meant much more expensive printers. Canon failed us. Epson failed us. HP failed us. Most all of them with ink clogging issues. We tried to convert the Epson to use tanks with some kit but it was janky and unreliable. We couldn't afford a Xerox. But then we bought a Brother and it was the most reliable hassle free printer we ever had. The MFC-J6935DW was worth every cent.

I'm with you here. I accidently bought a printer with their instant ink offer. Thank goodness I never signed up to it. They would keep sending you ink when you used it, so even though it was compatible with non-hp ink, using it would make you pay for HP ink anyway. How evil.

We have “Printers as a Service” now?

Also for a printer that is connected only via USB, the only way it can "have access to the Internet" is via your computer. So there is software on your computer that HP demands you cannot remove or it will prevent the printer from having the remote Internet connection.

I recently bought a Brother printer. Mainly because I had enough of hp’s scam plans and ecosystem. Brother printers are great and I highly recommend them even though they are not as popular as hp. I recommend the MFC L3700 CDW printer for home use.

Personally, I have an Epson. No issues and the scans are just like the real one. We had an issue where our printer wouldn’t print right even after cleaning the print head, and they replaced it under warranty. I still have that replacement printer. That was in 2017

I've owned a few hp printers over the years but I found getting them connected to the internet too much of a hassle so they are almost always connected via USB. The only internet connected one I've dealt with was an office jet 8600 that we got years ago and it's LAN only. I also keep my printers turned off 90% of the time so that it doesn't have a chance to "update" and remove my ability to use 3rd party ink cartridges.

I had a HP inkjet for 6 years as a uni student. I ordered 2L of ink and a filling kit the second week after I got it - didn’t pay a single cent on ink since. Best purchase I ever made.

I have an hp laserjet from around 2008. It has power, and usb. It still works with the original toner. I've had it my whole life... It doesn't need drivers or software to work. I wonder when hp crossed the line between favoring profits over the consumers?

This has been around for a while, just under the "HP Instant Ink" program. Ink subscription with plans and firmware updates/monitoring that can't be disabled and the cartridges are bricked within 7 days of cancellation of HPII or 7 days of no internet connection.

I have an HP laser printer but I bought it back in '08 and don't use it often.

I bought a Brother laser printer a month ago after dealing with an ancient broken-down HP inkjet for years, and it's so much more pleasant to use. Will happily never give another dime to HP.

I don’t like HP so haven’t purchased one. But it was obvious they were going to lock everything down as they think it’s a good idea for your printer to charge your credit card and send out replacement ink as it gets low. It was clear where they were going. I’ve had brother lasers for a while and after 7000 pages using non brother toners I’ve had no issues at all.

Thank you for this video, Louis. I was actually considering buying a new HP printer and I was not aware of this firmware issue. I will now definitely strike HP off my list. By the way, I have owned the same Brother laser printer for the last 15 years, and it still works just as well as it did the day I bought it. I am starting to feel like an old man, constantly saying, "they don't make tech like they used to," and "back in my day, your printer didn't spy on you". #MakeOrwellFictionAgain

I hope you're having a lovely day as well. Fuck HP.

I'm honestly happy with my HP printer. A Laserjet 1200 from 2001. It doesn't do much, but what it does it does flawlessly. It takes a new third party toner cartridge every couple of years for 20€ so it costs next to nothing and it still works under windows 11.

Thanks for the PSA. I WAS going to buy a hp.

You know what's funny? I got one of these HP+ compatible printers, and of course signed up for it not knowing I couldn't use aftermarket cartridges anymore. A few months ago I read the fine print and figured that out. I called them, quoting that exact page that says I could cancel any time and got escalated 3 times, just to be told "no." Now, of course I was pissed, but the kicker here is that my printer (OfficeJet Pro 9015e) *doesn't check if it has the internet or not.* I was on that 6-month instant ink trial and before it ended I disabled the wireless function and decided I'd only use it via USB (in fear that it'll realise I'm not paying for the instant ink cartridges) and it worked. And guess what? I have a stockpile of instant ink cartridges here from when I kept requesting new ones (since you pay for the pages you print, not the cartridges - they give you those for free). So, what if I run out? I guess I'll just have to pay £0.99 so I can keep requesting cartridges over an entire month and have an even larger stockpile of them. Fuck you, HP.

I'm almost ashamed to say that I bought an HP laptop back in 2020, but I'll *never* buy one of their printers.

I love my Laserjet IID. No nobbles. I have a Kyocera M5521 colour laser that knows non genuine toner but still prints just fine.

I think a big problem with printing is that most tech-savvy people have realized that when it comes to everyday usage. Its hard to justify owning a printer. You can confidently get by with your phone when it comes to concert tickets, flights and various bookings. Our demands don't play in anymore. It's not even an issue of target demographics. We've completely exited the market. Last time I recall having to print was to attend a Japanese Proficiency test where the Japanese JLPT organization required me to bring a printed copy of the test voucher PDF file they emailed me. Even so at the test site they did admit people who only had the PDF on their phone despite it being explicitly against their rules. Most regular people know that printer ink cost is a scam. I think those people are not aware that there exists reasonable options. HP and companies like them have sowed with salt and ruined the market for everyone. They've reduced themselves to the same level as the low-life scammers that peddles unnecessary anti-virus subscriptions to old people. And they just keep making it worse with this increasingly toxic monetization and somehow they are patting themselves on their backs while their market crumbles.

HP recently also botched a firmware update and bricked a range of those HP plus printers. I'm not aware any of those users have been fixed yet. I do have an HP printer, but it's a similar vintage to your Brother. It complains about refilled/3rd-party ink cartridges, but I can live with that. We won't be buying another HP printer until I hear this has gone away.

I work in IT and HP printers are by far the worst of all the major brands. Constant issues with these huge pieces of crap

After going thru cartridges like one every month on my hp, around 4 years ago when brother launched their ciss printer, i bought a DCP-T310 , and now the printer counter is over 6000 pages, and still only refilled it once ( it's now 8/10 filled since there was more ink in the printer already than i could fill with 1 refill kit ).

" Having Problems "

I've been using Canon's ink tank printers. Look for the ones that take a "maintenance cartridge", so you can replace the ink absorber if needed. I haven't had to replace it yet, but at only ten bucks to replace it, it's good to have the option over having to throw out the whole printer.

I decided in about 2014 to never buy another HP product again when they refused to honor their own warranty and kept transferring me to the out of warranty service line. They lost a customer for life and I have talked dozens of people to considering another brand over them. So luckily this will never be a problem for me lol

Samsung printers used to be a great choice too, until they sold off their printer division to HP. Now Brother definitely makes the best consumer and small business printers. Epson aren't too bad. I bought a multi function WF2650 for my wife over 7 years ago and have always used third party ink in it. The main issue I've seen with Epson is never unplug the printer. If it works fine and you put it in storage for a year, the print heads, which aren't easily serviceable, will clog and it's junk after that. Also their eco-tank line has gotten much better and no way they can stop you from buying bulk ink from anyone willing to copy their refill bottles. It's really too bad. HP used to make really good printers. Now I wouldn't recommend any consumer HP product.

I was gifted a HP printer some years back from my job. Long story short, the excuse by HP to have the printer constantly online was to ‘monitor ink levels so they can send you a new cartridge when the ink runs low’. More insult to injury, my dumb ass had their ‘never run low ink service blah blah blah’ service, and cancelled said service when I discovered I couldn’t use non-HP ink. How about they kept charging my card until I had to cancel the card. I currently have a 3yr old Canon laser printer using some random ink from Amazon. So far, no issues yet.

I'm thankful that 3D printing community hasn't gone the same route as paper printers.

I have an almost 20 year old HP PSC-1310, that I've connected via USB to my router to use it wirelessly. It's still going like a champ and i can even refill the ink cartridges myself, so I haven't bought any new ink, besides my refill kit, for the past 5 years. They really don't build 'em like they used to.

I'm retired now but the last company I worked for used HP laserjet printers and even though they didn't have the instantink program back then, HP was stlil claiming they were eco-friendly because they encouraged user to send in their used toner cartridges which our office manager had been doing until I pointed out to her that it wasn't eco-friendly purposes but to keep the cartridges out of companies that refill them and if HP was so eco-friendly why didn't they have the same program for the used drums? Even though my employer refused to use refilled cartidges, we started giving the used cartridges to a neighboring business that did!

My wife and I agree with you %100. It's unbelievable just how many people are willing to give up their privacy for convenience or a discount. When they were putting in all the ”smart" meters for electricity, most people agreed as soon as they were told it would lower their electric bill. Even after there was proof of them catching fire and the extreme high end they put out, as long as an official promised they were safe people went ahead and got them. We actually had to fill out a form that refused the new meter. They sent us 3 more letters afterwards threatening us with charging us more money if we didn't get one installed saying we had to pay for future installment for anyone that may purchase our property. We saw and heard about people that had electric company coming out with sheriffs and making threats to force them to get the meter installed. We got billed for "future installment" plus every month they charged $35 extra on our bill ”meter reader" fee! The meter reader only came out 1/2 the time the other 1/2 they guessed. After enough ticked off customers got together and took the matter to court the $35 was dropped to $10. It's still ridiculous. Not one person that got that meter that we know saw their bill go down, it went up. Then they used the data collected from smart meters to try and convict 2 people of crimes based on monitoring when they were home or not. No that's not invasion at all. Information is "never” hacked so it won't fall into the hands of someone with dubious intentions. Yes right.

I still use a Brother printer which is more than 10 years old and was being used in a company. Replaced the printing head once to another used one and still does it's job.

HP lost my business a bit over a year ago. Cannon went on the list of never buy about 6 months ago. Currently using Brother, with no complaints other than network being wireless only on the unit I bought.

There's even been articles about HP printers that stop working when you use third party ink cartridges in the British press

This happened to me when I purchased an Orbic Airsurf tablet through Verizon, my carrier. I don’t have free tech support unless I pay $25/m to assure for a tech coach but I’m on the hook with it til I pay it off and it feels like a loan that no one can fix

I've read that they also check if the legitimate HP ink cartridges aren't out of date, like something you've forgotten about in the back of the fridge, and stop working until you've changed the cartridge. People who bulk buy to save cash, aren't impressed.

nothing more environmentally friendly than filling forests with endless printers and printer cartridges

It's get better. HP forced us (we're a small company that sells printers and inks from HP and of course from other manufacturers) to sign an angreement with them to get on their Authorized Partner List, agreeing that from now on we are only buying HP inks from their Authorized distributors (not always the case, it it's significantly cheaper somewhere else of course we buy it there). If we would have not signed it, our distributors would reject our orders for HP printers and inks, cause they only fulfill those that are on HP Authorozied Partner List. So we couln't buy the printer in the first place, not just the ink. Disclaimer: we don't sell that HP+ crap at all. Oh, btw they have a double line of products. They have the traditional printers, where this crap is optional, and they have the HP+ line, where ther printer is noticeably cheaper than the same effing one, but this one can only be used with an HP+ subsrciption. What drives me really crazy there's only one letter difference in the product number between the non HP+ and the HP+ one, so they intentionally made it hard to find out which one is which. Also, how freaking enviromentally friendly is to stock/manufacture/ship the same freaking printer with a modded FW under two SKU-s? T&C's of their forced partner program, if anyone is interested: hpscoutso.spa.hpcloud.hp.com/simple_partner

I "own" an HP printer from 2013. Last time I had to install their drivers they forced me to use a software that does not recognize my printer and it's always frustrating to use it. I've found that I can use the built-in print button on any other software and the scan utility from W10 to bypass that HP program and I couldn't be happier.

They should add a section for disposable printers in stores

I was aware of ink printers and the likes of HP which do those shady things. So here's what i did: I purchased a Xerox MFP, (B215 Model) for the price 5 times higher than an ink HP printer at that time. It came with half filled toner cartridge and no DRM. 3 years and half later, the included HALF FILLED toner cartridge is at 83%, the drum is at 97% - all of this after about 300 pages printed in total since end of october 2020 (date of purchase) until now. In 2 years' time, I will get my money's worth, I probably won't need to replace any consumables in the printer in this timeframe and even beyond. The toner doesn't get dry since it's powder - just need to protect the components from UV light, so even if i don't use it, it will always print the same high-quality crisp pages like it did since day 1. Now This is what I call environmentally friendly. Had I bought HP inc. crap, I would have likely bought many extra ink cartridges from them until now, or even more. Long term benefits everyone. Choose Xerox laser printer, folks. At least until nowadays, they don't do crap like HP does (at least not that I am aware of).

We had an HP printer at my previous work, new model back then, some laserjet pro, both BW and colour. It was a pain from the get-go. Drivers were finicky, their software required an account to use...wanna scan? Login now! Not only that, since a lot of printers like to use a bit of cyan with each BW print, it eventually ran out of cyan before any other colour...so of course, because we were out of cyan, there was just no way to print in BW...but wait, there's more...it locked up the printer so hard, you couldn't even SCAN A DOCUMENT TO YOUR COMPUTER. That's right, because you were empty on cyan, you couldn't scan a document...the actual screen on the printer itself only displayed that you needed to replace the cartridge, you couldn't do anything else, the software also refused to do anything, kept saying to replace the missing colour... We got rid of it soon after. I personally use a very old HP laser printer MFC from around 2008, back when the printers were built to survive a nuke...i can get a whole set of colours, which do around 3000 prints and black, which can do around 5000 prints, for like 40€. I'll keep this thing alive for as long as i can, it's a tank and a half.

Totaly agree!! It's none of their property. And we should be able to do whatever we want with it.

That terms of service sounds exactly like the one for the free tv with the ad screen