Hacker News Reader

Comment by nix23 | Hacker News Reader

>Every manufacturer that abuses this mechanism for anything other than actual security updates should be fined in a way that registers on their stock price and if they do it twice they should be fined out of existence.

No fines, just allow the customer to send back the devices and get a full refund plus all costs covered by the manufacturer...it could be so easy.

Give back the HP and buy a Brother....that would be called a self regulating Market.

View on HN

Brother apparently has been going down this path as well. I've read that they intentionally degrade print quality with third-party inks and other things [1,2]

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/printers/comments/s9b2eg/brother_mf...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131

>No fines, just allow the customer to send back the devices and get a full refund plus all costs covered by the manufacturer...it could be so easy.

Wh-what? Yes fines! ABSOLUTELY yes fines! The punishment should be blunt, uniform, and intimidating! This is absolutely a situation for fines!

>The punishment should be blunt, uniform, and intimidating! This is absolutely a situation for fines!

To cover refund is a much bigger "fine" and the money flows directly back to those who suffered, that's not the case with fines, and fines are mostly small change for big-corps.

Just extend the rights of Customers and everything could be fine.

Refunds can be stymied, much harder with fines (the party on the other side carries a much larger stick).

But fine (pun intended), let's do both. Seriously, this sort of stuff should be discouraged in the strongest possible way.

>But fine (pun intended), let's do both.

Absolutely fine with that, plus a massive fine if the refund is not paid back in a fair amount of time ;)

This is a problem not solved by the market, for many reasons, but the most important one is that they all try to do this sooner or later. Shareholder value must increase and be found somewhere.

Only government regulations can keep capitalism in check, maybe an unpopular opinion on HN but it hurts startups too because the market is not penetrable for competition.

When business can affect polices in there favor. Good luck with that. You can see how well Gov. regulation is working out with John Deers control over farming equipment.

The real problem is that a certain political affiliation has opened the floodgates toward unbridled corporate meddling in politics.

If coroporations can set the rule due to legal bribery (lobbying) that's a larger systemic issue that only underwrites my point.

Fortunately there are other examples that show it can be done better, you may have to look for those examples either outside of the USA or in the past of the USA.

My point is, more gov. regulation isn't working. That is not likely to change until there is a systemic change in our system of government.

bollocks. plenty of gov regulation works in other countries. European trains run on time and don't spew chlorine gas at people.

your point is clearly wrong on so many levels and from so many perspectives it's just laughable.

Some people requires market to work 100% perfect, or else government regulations. For some reason, government regulations are allowed to fail miserably (e.g. 18th amendment).

The market solution doesn't have to be your desired solution. Here it seems that some people doesn't care HP practices, so market provides shitty HP practices. They have easy options (bare minimum: don't buy HP), but they actively avoid them, so the market allows and encourages it.

The incentives of capitalism are such that unless there are very strict regulations, it degenerates in what the game of monopoly tries to convey in a visceral manner. A few people will own everything at the cost of everybody else.

Because protection against monopolies is dead in USA, we see exactly this play out.

Not true, and well known as not true for ages in the economic field. The primary source of monopolies are government regulations (e.g. patents, exclusive licenses, etc). In fact the words "monopoly" and "patent" started meaning "the government will allow this and only this business to do that thing, and will prosecute whoever tries to compete".

HP only have like 25% of the printer market. Realistic alternatives currently are: Brother, Epson, Kyocera, Ricoh and in some markets NEC. Anyone buying a HP today is asking for it.

> The primary source of monopolies are government regulations

This is beyond ridiculous, it's just bad-faith.

The problem with the "economic field" is largely that it treats theory and practice as fungible.

What monopoly? You just can buy a printer with refillable ink tanks from several competitors, but also from HP. Then you pay the real price for the printer and the printer heads that need to be replaced occasionally.

These printers are sold below cost so that money can be made from the ink. Naturally, this needs some form of DRM. Capitalism offers you plenty of alternatives for printing at the best cost, these printers are actually good deals for people who rarely print.

Just that ink printers don't really work well for people who rarely print, compared to laser printers, for example.

Why? The upfront cost of a laser printer is higher.

>Only government regulations can keep capitalism in check

That's what i mean, a customer is allowed to return a device/car/whatever and get fully refunded if the initial function of a device changes with no technical advantage for the customer.

Fines brings the Customer nothing (aka you don't get your money back) and is mostly small change for the company, no need to change anything...but paying full refunds for let's say a 4yo device, that could hurt allot.

The onus is on the customers to realize that the has been an issue, and they would be eligible for a refund (minus inflation).

Then there are shipping costs, likely the customers bought it from a local retainer, that may or may not be in business... The endless emails and phone calls. Overall the customers are not in any position of power without a forced recall.

>The onus is on the customers to realize that the has been an issue,

If the customer has no issues there are no issues right?

>Then there are shipping costs, likely the customers bought it from a local retainer, that may or may not be in business...

Again it's an HP and you send it directly to them, the MANUFACTURER has to cover all costs. Your retailer has not made the update so he should have nothing to do with it.

>The endless emails and phone calls.

One email: My printer (serial-number) worked for two years with that toner, since your update it's not working anymore (error blablabla), roll back that update or send me a shipping label.

>Overall the customers are not in any position of power without a forced recall.

Time to change that then right? Restore the functionality of my device or take it back.

You are making a problem where no are.

>If the customer has no issues there are no issues right

Customers have been conditioned to blame themselves for any device/product shortcomings, and consider themselves rather unworthy. Personally I have witnessed that first hand that end users consider both hardware and software too hard to use and any misgivings would be attributed to their own faults. That extends to all kind of hardware - including hand tools.

>Customers have been conditioned to blame themselves for any device/product shortcomings, and consider themselves rather unworthy

That's something no one can solve for them, never.

But at least they should be capable going into a "Printer-Forum" and ask.

One then will say: Get a refund or roll back the update, i have the same printer...they do that (the asking) with, for example car's all the time.

The fact that you can return a product in the first place and get a full refund is because of regulations in the first place.

I got an Epson ecotank and it really works nicely with third party inks

I got one of those too, and I got it because I didn’t want to worry about this kind of garbage from HP. It’s also a bonus that I haven’t had to refill the ink in a LONG time.

But oh my. The quality of the printing is terrible.

The quality of my ecotank's printing is terrible on normal mode, but when I put it into high quality mode it looks nice.

That's the first stop, and the second is to make sure you run it at or near 20 degrees Celsius to get the ink to flow properly otherwise quality will suffer.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com