> 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.
Name one other subscription service that sends you physical stuff every month that they remotely disable all of when you cancel.
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.
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.
Not making a judgement either way, just adding more data.
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.
Printers, and their manufacturers sucks, and HP is the worst of the bunch. No one should ever even try to defend them, there is nothing defensible about them.
Especially considering you can now buy printers that only ever work with instant ink and reject all other cartridges.
(Btw, I'm using a modded brother printer)
Where does that expectation come from, exactly? The name?
The pricing page is clearly and explicitly all about pages per month [1].
> It's prepaid, but with an automatic recharge of 8€/month. Money that's not used stays on the card, forever.
So you're comparing a different type of plan here.
Prepaid mobile plans like this are akin to Amazon's "subscribe and save" program: they'll charge and send you a cartridge on whatever frequency you like, regardless of usage. Choose too frequent and you'll amass as huge stockpile; too infrequent and you'll run out of ink.
Instant Ink is like 'regular' mobile plans: you get x GB per month for a certain price. If you cancel your plan, even though you only used 5% of your data for that month, you don't get to continue your plan.
HP's FAQ even say this [2]:
> If you decide to cancel your HP Instant Ink, you can go back to using HP original Standard or XL cartridges. HP Instant Ink cartridges will not work after the end of the current billing cycle in which you cancel. To continue printing after your billing cycle ends, make sure you have standard replacement ink cartridges ready to use in your printer.
The alternative to all this is to just buy regular cartridges as you need them.
[1] https://instantink.hpconnected.com/sg/en/l/v2?jumpid=af_e1d0...
[2] https://www.hp.com/us-en/printers/instant-ink/faq.html#:~:te...
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.
My trash service will come and pick up the cans when I cancel service.