Hewlett-Packard used to be a trusted brand. The HP brand seems to be losing more trust with every action like this that they take.
Instant ink charges you by page, so you can run cleaning cycles as much as you want, do everything you need to do that maintains a good experience, and people just pay for what they actually use in output. I see the appeal.
These practices are unfortunately widespread among printer makers.
They can get away with it because and only because there's a huge void in the field of OSHW printers. I imagine a decent effort to make an OSHW laser printer would gather a lot of interest. Even if the first printer were to be slow, expensive and had poor resolution.
I'd easily recommend such a printer to everybody. It'd be a really easy sell. Everybody hates dealing with printers.
If you need a printer now, by all means, avoid the bad brands, and go for a laser, preferably monochrome, with an ethernet port, postscript support and IPP support.