HP disables customers’ printers if they use ink cartridges from cheaper rivals
telegraph.co.uk
telegraph.co.uk
No, you can’t say it wasn’t your decision. If you want to not be held accountable for the work your employees, contractors, and agents do on your behalf, you should have to prove they acted against your express written orders.
If even a few dozen printers were bricked by this it would represent more lost value than the threshold for grand larceny in many jurisdictions; do you propose we let people who steal, say, $1600 of goods walk away scot free? And don’t waste your breath on fines —- those will only be passed on to the captive consumers as the “cost of business.”
"corporations are people except for all that crime and punishment stuff."
"(5)
(A)knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer;
(B)intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, recklessly causes damage; or
(C)intentionally accesses a protected computer without authorization, and as a result of such conduct, causes damage and loss.[2]"
Meanwhile, it is a miscarriage of justice that prosecutors don’t seem to use CFAA against large corporations.
Even if there isn't surreptitious transfer of the hardware, they could certainly have a clause in there that authorizes them to do such things.
Do we want to be ruled by laws, or by contracts?
It looks like they updated their program terms to force you to buy their ink. Honestly I thought that was already the case since I had tried using cheaper ink and the printer rejected it.
Now people seem to think that the other party doesn't even have to be present. It's one-sided. No discussion or agreement need take place. No evidence need to be preserved that there was a discussion or agreement. It only protects one side of the deal, not both, and can be amended by one side with no recourse to the other. If you listen carefully, you catch wind of this idea all the time in daily life. Talking about gym memberships, cell phone plans, cable tv, etc.
The people talking about it are on the losing side, too. They don't seem hurt or angry or confused, they accept it as if it's the way things should be or have to be.
It's not entirely clear to me why this switched. It's not clear to me how no one ever seemed to be outraged over it.
I don't think it could be fixed. Sure, I can imagine legislation that might cut out the worst aspects of it (no, gyms can't demand that people sign year long contracts unless they also prove that they're using the existence of the contracts to justify the purchase of new equipment or the like). But without people at least grumbling about these things, there'd never be pressure for any legislation anyway. Let alone the likelihood that this is more of a matter for the courts than legislatures.
Given all this, I don't think that people are buying physical products anymore. How many exercise bikes or treadmills out there are cloud-connected and will stop working if the company goes out of business? Or if your "subscription" ends and you don't let it auto-renew?
The ship has sailed, I think, on the concept of personal property.
What If i never installed their software? Now what?
Also, what counts as protected?
That being said, HP seems to mostly rebadge Canon printers loaded with their firmware, so I am not sure why people are still buying them. HP is just a middle man these days.
Prison is hard, on the other hand let the scale of damage and intention decide.. more human would be just stick to penalties. They just must be high enough to hurt really, not ridiculous amounts you can price in. Like do it once and maybe get away with it, but do it twice or thrice and you will quite certainly bankrupt the company.
And if it's a million $80 printers affected by this, it's an $80 million crime.
We don't need to put CEOs in prison for making consumer-hostile decisions, we just need to also make those decisions bad business.
Corporations aren't people--they can't make the decision to do unethical things. Yes, I understand the law, I'm saying the law is incorrect. People do unethical things, and people should be held responsible for their actions.
Fining decision-makers might be an acceptable alternative to jail time, as long as the minimum fine is some sort of multiple of profits gained, to prevent criminals from just figuring a slap on the wrist fine into their decision-making math.
This is like "if you raise the minimum wage we'll only have to lay people off" which is equally self serving and utterly, completely wrong.
Employees dont pay. Shareholders pay. If they could have fired 1 employee and collected a bit of extra profit they would already have done so.
But they couldn't pay workers less or decrease workforce, because they needed those workers to execute the unethical business plan. They weren't waiting for a fine to cut workers, they were waiting for the cash cow to stop producing milk to cut workers who were necessary to keep the cash cow going.
No they don't, they get passed on to shareholders. The market cap of the company decreases by the amount of the fine (plus any predicted future effect of the lost money) and the stock price goes down to reflect that.
If the company could get away with paying workers less or decreasing its workforce in order to boost profitability, it already would have. It's not waiting for a fine to justify doing so.
Also, they _are_ cutting employees. There have been a lot of layoffs recently, and some of them have explicitly stated it'd not because they can't afford those employees.
Yes HP is laying off employees just like pretty much every other large tech company right now. Which shows you it has nothing to do with fines, and rather everything to do with industry-wide overexpansion during COVID and high interest rates now.
Exactly!
I don’t know how to deal with people who talk about the economy in terms of a perfect competition free market where all participants have full knowledge and are all equal in terms of power. If a physicist talked in terms of zero friction or spherical cows, we would laugh them off and never listen to them again. And yet people continue to talk about the economy with these assumptions that make zero friction and spherical cows look like practical applied physics.
Because it isn't true.
Another word for lack of knowledge is "risk".
The amount of risk is factored into the price of everything you buy and sell. For example, a name brand item sells for a higher price than a generic item because the name brand carries with it less risk for the buyer.
Note that "perfect information" is not part of the definition of it.
A 0.33L can would’ve been too little, but a 1L bottle too much, and a 1.5L bottle far too much. 0.50L was the perfect size.
The pricing?
0.33L - €0.66 (€2.00 per L)
0.50L - €1.48 (€2.96 per L)
1.00L - €1.93 (€1.93 per L)
1.50L - €2.09 (€1.39 per L)
Initially this made me angry, as it is very clear they figured out that the 0.5L bottle is the most convenient size, and put a huge premium on that, as people that need that size (for say, in a backpack) will pay it for lack of alternative. In other words, the price the market will bear.
But then I reminded myself, modern companies will always try to give you the least amount of value for the highest price the market will bear.
This is also why you should never feel bad if you can get one over on a company. Pricing error that gets you expensive shoes for €1? Screw ‘em. Contractual obligation that effectively gives you lifetime for €1? Screw ‘em. They’ll do the same to you whenever they can.
I wish businesses believed in being synergistic with their customers and nurturing loyalty, but alas. Not the times we live in.
I recently saw a £700 bicycle carbon fork on sale for £70, new, the shop just forgot a zero. I didnt buy it out of feeling bad :(
If a company like Amazon mispriced something that way, I'd gladly buy it.
Modern consumers will always try to pay as little as possible for the highest amount of value they can.
The proper term for this is The Law of Supply and Demand. It's how markets work.
BTW, your anecdote illustrates why making the effort to learn some math while in grade school is worthwhile.
As an aside, the example would be even more dramatic with non-sugar, where the 0.5L bottle is €1.88, but the 1L bottle is €1.95, due to both the price premium of ‘convenient size’ and ‘healthy alternative’ being stacked.
That's not how S&D works. S&D is in-play even if Fanta had a monopoly. Even if the prices were set by the government. Governments have tried every scheme imaginable to repeal the law of S&D, but they never work.
BTW, I gave up all soda about 15 years ago. It took about a year to finally stop craving it. I no longer have any desire for it.
Besides the health issues, it has saved me a ton of money in aggregate.
Soda for me is a guilty pleasure, like a good barbecue, or a bottle of red wine. But I appreciate the heads-up!
Also pretty much everyone: Wait, the decisions businesses make that affect me absolutely suck!
Ehh, if they have to, but execs are going to do their very best not to pass on costs to shareholders.
Even if shareholders foot the bill, why would that be a desirable outcome? Are you arguing that we have to fine corporations instead of holding the decision makers responsible? What do you have against people taking responsibility for their own actions?
> If the company could get away with paying workers less or decreasing its workforce in order to boost profitability, it already would have. It's not waiting for a fine to justify doing so.
But they couldn't pay workers less or decrease workforce, because they needed those workers to execute the unethical business plan. They weren't waiting for a fine to cut workers, they were waiting for the cash cow to stop producing milk to cut workers who were necessary to keep the cash cow going.
this is the KEY thing that is always missed.
shareholder happiness level: monitored at all times, a KPI of utmost significance at the most senior levels.
worker/employee happiness level: monitored at the Q{1-4} level at best, a KPI of least significance at all levels.
But it's not up to execs, execs don't control the share price, no matter how much they wish they could. The market does. The market sees the fine, it adjusts the market cap, done.
> Even if shareholders foot the bill, why would that be a desirable outcome?
Because shareholders elected the board. That's the entire foundation of joint-stock corporations, that shareholders get the rewards but also suffer the losses.
Not directly, but surely I don't need to explain to you what effect cutting costs typically has on share price?
> Because shareholders elected the board. That's the entire foundation of joint-stock corporations, that shareholders get the rewards but also suffer the losses.
Sorry, I'm missing the part of this where you answered the question. Why is this a desirable outcome? What is the problem with holding human beings responsible for their own actions?
I don't give a fuck about the foundation of joint-stock corporations. If the foundations of joint-stock corporations result in sociopaths profiting off harming people with no consequences, the foundations of joint-stock corporations need to change or be discarded completely.
Surely you do, because sometimes the stock goes up if the workers weren't needed in the first place, sometimes it goes down because it shows the company is flailing, and sometimes it does nothing because it's business as usual.
You're operating under an illusion that execs have control over how the market will respond.
> Sorry, I'm missing the part of this where you answered the question.
And I'm missing the part where anything I wrote gave you the excuse to be rude. Please be civil, this is HN.
Why would there be a 1 to 1 relationship between the price of stocks and reality, when most investing is blind passive investing that ignores reality by design?
Stock prices are not rational and there is no consistent way to calculate the value of a company. An expensive media campaign that accomplishes nothing related to their business offerings and may even lose the company significant amounts of money can end up raising a stock price. And you also don't have unlimited time to try and wait out stocks which also have so many other random factors being thrown in over the years.
Purely in theory in a vacuum, yes. In practice, you'll have a very hard time finding examples where that actually happened. At best, the stock takes a momentary dip and next ~week it's back to where it was.
But so what if the stock is back up the following week? More things happened over the following week. You're missing the fact that it would have been up even higher if it weren't for the fine. (Alternatively, the stock also might go down even further the following week. But similarly, it wouldn't have gone down as much if not for the fine.)
This is not theory, this is how stocks actually work in the aggregate. If they didn't, you'd be able to make a lot of easy money off the stock market otherwise.
- Layoffs - Demotion - Canceling of raises - Canceling of promotions - Reduction in perks and other business benefits - etc
A business needs a certain number of workers for a certain output. Those workers need to be paid a market amount for their skillset, for the amount of output. If the company does not have the funds to pay them - due to fines or competition or any other reason, the company lays off workers and reduces output and revenue - giving those sales to competitors, or goes out of business.
Yes, if the solution to "we broke printers" is to refund every single affected sale, the company will lay off workers, reduce output, and close down if that happens enough. Their competition will increase output to fill the unmet demand, and hire workers.
That literally is the point of the fine, and is a good thing, not a bad thing.
I understand what I am advocating might seem against existing case law about LLC and as I’ve said before I am not a lawyer so it might not be something straightforward to codify but I know it is possible if we have the will and we make it a priority.
I would hope we should have the owners of our economy, the 0.0001% of the population on our side on this matter because upper management is robbing them or they will if we institute reasonably high enough fines instead of prison time.
PII data identifying, documenting it, and periodic review's of that is becoming standard procedure.
I remember when GDPR was announced, where for most projects, there was not anyone who could tell you for any given project, what all data is being collected and stored where.
So GDPR did have positive* effect at least with the part of the market I am familiar with.
* As in positive for people privacy
Did these people continue to maintain the processes and rules enacted by their predecessors? If so they aren't "left holding the bag", they are the remaining beneficiaries of the system. If you are one of the few who have the power to stop something but you don't because you benefit from the status quo, you aren't a victim. You are the perpetrator.
I know you said few and I am moving goal posts here a little but it isn’t always the “big guys” who suffer either.
Will you volunteer to tell the retiring teacher or firefighter that they will have to starve because you’d rather punish the ultimate perpetrators rather than hold the actually guilty (the then CEO and the board) accountable to the law?
I would. And firefighters and teachers are used to getting fucked by everybody anyway. (mom is a teacher, and have several friends who are firefighters).
But in reality, big union funds, invest only a little bit in any one company, so no, some big company loosing some of it market cap, would make little difference to each individual teacher and firefighter.
What property was destroyed? The HP printer still works with genuine ink cartridges and the third party ink cartridge will work for printers that don't require genuine HP ink.
I imagine there isn't an existing criminal law covering that and I'm not in favor of interpreting criminal laws creatively to expand their scope, however I could be convinced to support making a new criminal law to cover this kind of behavior.
[0] No doubt, they have some fine print in a clickwrap agreement giving themselves permission.
If a big-time CEO does this, he gets a fay bonus
The basic reason is that the US (and the Western World) has gone through deregulation to re-monopolization, so consumers face monopolies or oligopolies in most major markets and these entities basically make their money by selling their products as "services" in the chunk-size that makes a consume most desperate - IE, Hp will fight forever to sell 100 prints for $30 rather than 10000 prints for $120 and only hard threats can stop them (and we know the shit MS does - if MS could charge an ambulance a fee to keep their heart monitor software from killing them, they would, etc).
I hardly think that issuing any fine would make them care. Why would the CEO give one little tiny shit about a million dollar fine, or a ten million dollar fine for that matter. They just pass it on to the consumer. And that is only passing on the cost of the fine only to the ink division. They could easily pass on the costs to all departments.
Fines are silly and useless. I guess if they were to have a $500 million fine, that would get the company's attention, but I don't see that ever happening, honestly.
But I think if they put the C-suite and board of directors into jail for 8 years, that would have a major effect on all boards and executives.
And right now, corporations are claiming supply chains and inflation for raising their prices, yet they have the largest profits ever. This can only mean that they are raising their prices but their costs are staying the same or rising very little. All of them should be put in prison - robbing the poor and middle class to put that wealth in the hands of the rich. More siphoning money from the poor and middle class. Put them in prison, I say. Make some example. This is not about price controls, but against holding the US population hostage. Is there collusion? Because that is against the law. That is not controlling prices. Collusion is collusion.
Fines work great as long as they're sufficient enough to disincentivize the relevant behavior! If you made it so that any printer that you disabled cost more to you than one left enabled, then the business would absolutely change course, no huge single-time fine required.
> But I think if they put the C-suite and board of directors into jail for 8 years, that would have a major effect on all boards and executives.
Agreed, but I think that effect would be extremely detrimental to society (capital punishment for misbehavior also has a big impact, and is pretty clearly not the kind of thing we'd want.)
If there is currently a criminal law that the CEO is breaking, then by all means they should be tried. If we're just trying to end business practices we don't like, though, regulation and monetary disincentives are the way to do that.
Making an example of someone should only be done insofar as they've broken the rules. If we don't like the way they're acting while following the rules, the rules are the things we should change.
For this case, computing back:
94M printers are sold per year.
HP’s market cap is $29 billion.
So, fine them $1000 per printer they sold that has any sort of anti-third-party ink mechanism, payable direct to consumer. (This seems about right to me. It’s less than 10x the retail price of a printer.)
Production of a receipt or a picture of an HP branded printer serial number should be all that is required to obtain the $1000. If they fail to pay in 30 days, individuals can use the mechanism where the sherrif walks into an HP office and takes $1000 worth of stuff on behalf of the claimant.
After 12 months, any unclaimed money gets sent to charity.
As appropriate as that would be, I’d rather see the CEO and execs that approved this stuff go to federal maximum security prison for life than for all the unrelated HP employees to lose their jobs. (Though, arguably, their services would be better used elsewhere.)
Did I read this correct? Do consumer printers cost over $10k where you live?
i think he is saying $1000 = 10 x (retail price of printer). which would mean the retail price of a printer is $100
A lot of corporate bad behavior would be fairly easy to stop by making it a cost rather than a benefit. Things like an improper denial, you owe 2x the amount. Late payment, you owe say +20% plus a high interest rate on the delay. Fairly routine things you have a clock that's tolled while the other party is actually responding to requests for information, not transit time. (From when they receive it to when they respond. Thus they'll do everything electronic unless original signatures are required.) Clock runs out, that's considered an approval.
True, but only when the cost is greater than the profit from doing whatever it is you don't want the business to do. From example, if paying a bill late comes with a 20% premium, but not paying it increases profit by 21%, then it's better to pay late.
In the system of modern business it's really hard to see why things happen, so simple rules very rarely work. People are hugely creative when it comes to dreaming up ways around them.
If fines grow/shrink, then people will think "what are ways to get around these fines?" or more commonly "Are these fines larger than the profit I would earn?". Even if fines are increased for now, that's a temporary thing, and not everyone would care.
A CEO doesn't personally care about extra fines costing the company; that can be a "calculated risk". CEOs are very well paid and fines are generally an inconvenience. But these people cannot buy time; threaten to take away years of their life, and see how the underlying value structures change.
Maybe we don't need to, but we should.
Maybe we don't need to, but let's.
Difficulty: it’s a wobbler, and is only a misdemeanor unless it’s > $400 worth of damage. Good luck proving that in this situation.
Maybe if they wrote in an email their evil plan to set the printers on fire so their customers would buy new ones, and it caught some people’s houses on fire.
Civil claims or a class action are an entirely different matter of course.
This seems to be the top vote comment here, demanding jail time for CEOs for printers not working.
Meanwhile, the top comment on an article painstakingly detailing how a company is using every dirty trick in the book to get mentally incapable or distressed, etc people to sell homes to them at far below market value has a top comment basically saying “well, they signed a contract”.
Or maybe it’s as simple as this affects most HNers, so it’s the worst thing in the world, whereas that doesn’t, so people it does affect are just suckers.
Boycotts can be immensely powerful, and strike fear into the hearts of those who would exploit us.
Personally, I will never buy an HP product again. Absolute, permanent blacklist.
It's simply way too disgusting to me that they would even consider doing this, let alone actually carry it out.
What must they think of their customers? It's unforgivable.
I cannot find a single example of a successful boycott in my lifetime. Can you?
https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-boycotts-history-201802...
In my lifetime: The South African Apartheid boycotts drove US congressional action and ultimately resulted in an end to apartheid.
Little of this reaches mainstream outlets, as embarrassing oneself's somewhat untenable for institutions in speedy declines, partly, from relatedly-shortsighted population-alienators.
Also, of interest, is that HP and Canon printers can use the same toner cartridges:
https://www.shop.xerox.com/supplies-accessories?brand=6346
For the most part, HP does not make its own printers anymore and just sells rebadged printers running their own firmware. It would not surprise me if the ink for HP Smart Tank printers is identical to the ink for Canon Mega Tank printers.
They reportedly are selling some models using technology that they obtained from Samsung, but aside from that, very little of what they sell they actually make. They are basically a middle man.
Making loss of business or minor fines the only mechanism for correcting behaviour, means that the leaders can view antisocial and unethical behaviour as a cost benefit tradeoff. And the lack of personal accountability means the company leadership has very limited downside, even if they completely screw up.
And various forms of shunning have been codified into laws for a long time, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostracism
But yes, I agree, the codification and conviction is better than non-governmental individual or group action.
No, prison makes zero sense. When people agree to a business contract and one side fails to uphold their end of the bargain, the remedy should remain financial. And punitive remedies exist precisely to make sure the "cost of doing business" makes it no longer profitable.
And if that's not happening, then that's the fault of the legislators and voters. This is why we need to vote people into office who ensure that consumer protection laws remain strong.
I'm not saying corporate lobbying has zero influence (that would be naive), but if the electorate chooses to care about something, it trumps corporations. This is actually a major finding of academic research on corporate influence and lobbying in politics -- it's mostly effective specifically in areas where voters aren't paying attention and don't care.
You have to go to extraordinary and extreme measures to break out of the basic choices that you are offered for which the profits all go to the same group of people
There is basically Zero diversity in the corporate landscape for either consumers or workers.
Maybe even if that’s the trend, let’s choose not all live in a pvp hellscape owned by about 10,000 people that enjoy infinite luxury, another 8 million who insulate them by showing that “You too can be a class striver and abandon the working class” and the rest of the 8Billion people slowly killing each other for the scraps left behind as everyone tries to claw their way into the 1% and beyond.
In this case we are talking about printers. There are literally dozens of printer makers.
Least evil option?
Mellow compared to the alternatives.
Coincidentally, many HP and Canon laser printers use slight variations of the same toner cartridges such that third parties can support both printers with the same cartridges:
https://www.shop.xerox.com/supplies-accessories?brand=6346
I am curious if this is also true for the inkjet printers, but finding out would probably involve buying every cartridge and comparing. I cannot justify that expense to sate my curiosity.
That said... yeah, who knows what they're up to, 5 years later?
What else does BRK own, and thus influence via board and activist shareholder position that is in your home.
This is the point. You can have a million “options” but if they all only benefit a handful of owners then no matter how you “vote” with your dollars it still makes the same people the same money.
Again, you have to go to extremes to find a printer that is manufactured by a union or employee owned cooperative if there even are any.
Not at all - when one party intends to cheat another, we call that fraud and we do send people to jail for this regularly.
Or just curtail every holder's shares by a fixed percentage, if/when a publicly-owned company is found to have engaged in anti-competitive behavior. If the incentive of maximizing shareholder value is no longer aligned with the interests of society, maybe that's how to fix it.
If you bought and it is still under warranty, ask for a full refund. You likely won't get it, but make sure HP waste as much time as possible dealing with this
In the UK it is even worth considering to take this to the small claims court. Of course seek legal advice first.
The only way HP gets away with this, because people just accept this kind of behaviour.
No, the way they get away with it is to collude, and make sure customers have no other choices.
please name a situation in the past 50 years where a conpany went under or lost at least 10% of their revenue from'peiple not accepting' this behaviour
Some of that may be due to temporary outlook during the COVID pandemic.
However, it's still down by more than 10% from a pre-lockdown stock price of ~380.00 in February 2020.
Apparently, US Airways.
> Before US Airways was purchased by America West in 2005, the airline slashed its customer service budget, and outsourced many of those functions. As a result, the company mishandled or failed to address numerous complaints, angering customers to the point that no amount of cost-cutting could make up for the fact that passengers didn't want to do business with with the airline, eventually forcing it to file bankruptcy.
While brick-and-mortar stores have faced a lot of headwinds, and mismanagement is not always at the expense of the consumer, various failures have ultimately been attributed to consumers just not accepting it anymore.
https://www.marketingcharts.com/customer-centric/customer-ex...
> A poor customer experience has its consequences. Across all industries, an average of 45% of consumers cut their spending with companies after having a bad experience. The Fast Food industry is more likely than average to either see consumers decrease spending (42%) or completely stop spending (25%).
Sears and Kmart's failures have been blamed on decades of mismanagement driving away customers. https://www.wsj.com/articles/edward-lamperts-non-strategy-to...
> In pushing for a better return on investment that never materialized, Mr. Lampert lost sight of the most important player in retail: The customer.
> “When someone pulls up to a Kmart or Sears they don’t see ROI,” Mr. Cohen said. “They see light bulbs that are burnt out, potholes in the parking lot and a front door that looks like it was hit with a sledge hammer.”
Sure, any one thing rarely kills a company or even product line unless it's a true showstopper. But at least in part, this is because when customers let a company know that they aren't happy, the company listens.
I feel like these older, pre-dynamic security printers are going to be gold. Hang on to your babies, keep them safe, keep them running.
What’s needed is regulation and fines, so that it’s not the “cost of doing business” and they lose money (the one thing that dictates their decisions) from this stunt. If there was actually a decent competitor, they could simply be forced to fully refund impacted customers who decide to switch, but HP has basically a monopoly on printers. This is a sign they need to be broken up or put under strict regulation like utilities.
That would a) fully repay affected customers, b) stop the practice for future customers, and c) discourage other companies from this practice. IMO 3 goals, and the only 3 reasons, we have a justice system and punishments in the first place. This isn’t an action which caused permanent, life-altering harm. This is an action which can be 110% undone (via extra fines), so no further punishment is necessary.
And yes, I know petty thieves and druggies serve jail time for causing much lesser problems. That’s wrong too. “2 wrongs don’t make a right”
If this were anything other than tech - if, say, IKEA sold you a bed frame that disintegrated the moment you used a non-IKEA mattress or comforter - I don't think the government would be so blasé about it.
(EDIT: Perhaps less of a case if the printer merely won't work with those cartridges rather than actually being disabled.)
How can that possibly be legal?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directors_and_officers_liabili...
Reality: “Our insurance takes care of practically all personal risk.”
There are plenty of low-friction ways consumers could be reimbursed plus the cost of lost time or energy spent on a now 'broken' printer if we wanted to solve this in a fair way.
So financial crimes aren't serious to you?
This is the sort of overreaction that kills reasonable responses, like making HP reimburse everyone whose printer they disabled, trebled, plus pay a big fine to a regulator and also enter into a consent decree. Hit them with a market cap decimating fine. Then let the Board eat its own.
won't happen, because most of the customers live in different countries with different law systems
> hit them with a market cap decimating fine
won't happen, because most of the costs is beared by people in foreign countries who don't matter to US courts, and most of the profits are gathered by people in US (company, owners, shareholders, employees, budget)
It's not an accident that most of the time google and apple are fined by EU and VW is fined by USA.
The solution is really simple. Buy a printer that doesn’t do this. Many exist. They cost more, because HP sells these as loss leaders.
For HP, basically you look at $350-500 devices as the entry point. Some of the commercial inkjet and all of the midrange laser printers don’t have these problems.
Brother and Epson definitely offer devices with no ink controls. Canon used to, not sure about today. Epson sells a fixed print head printer with tanks of ink.
HPs strategy is a subscription model for casual users. It’s probably the best value for most people, who don’t really care about print and want minimal viable capabilities. If it’s not for you, it’s a declining, although still competitive market.
If it weren't for government contracts and Gartner quadrant payola I don't think HP would even exist.
But how about some sort of environmental levy on any device prematurely 'bricked', or disposed of before reaching a certain lifespan.
Including those bricked by server shutdowns, or by the inevitable failure of non-replaceable batteries. Perhaps even those designed to be somewhat fragile but not economically repairable - thinking of all the phones and tablets discarded due to cracked screens.
A fine requires you to be sued, whereas the levy applies immediately
I'm not sure if it's hyperbole or not. If it's not, what law was broken?
(Honest question. I'm not a fan of this, but I was curious if it's actually illegal.)
It was immoral and unethical but those are lesser concerns than maximising return on capital invested. Possibly, no law was clearly broken.
We need to outsource some of our lawmaking to ethics boards/commissions if we want to keep capitalism. Otherwise, every other company is now looking to defraud its customers and that’s the only way an endless desire for capital growth (exponential growth expectations from investors) goes.
I think we should pass the law and try it out, see how it feels.
Funny how access to enough money to form a corporation, does in certain circumstances tend to clothe your subsequent actions in virtue...
This is one of those really good "vote with your wallets" situations.
When I eventually gave up on inkjets altogether, I bought a Samsung laser. It didn't cost much more than an inkjet, toner lasts for ages, doesn't dry up, and it works fine. But as soon as I googled the support pages, it turned out Samsung's printer division had been acquired by HP, the website was impossible to navigate, and there wasn't any documentation.
So my one-man boycott failed.
And I don't know if it's related, but my Samsung wireless network printer does not print from the network anymore.
That being said, at least Samsung toner is cheap:
https://www.aaatoner.com/blreto4.html
I can get 1kg of toner for my printer for $35 before shipping. The cartridges only hold 90 grams.
There is even a third party chipless update to disable the chip:
Unfortunately, the imaging drum is integrated with the cartridge, is not meant to last and HP is not making new ones. I do not know how many refills I will get out of it. However, the starter toner cartridge lasted 8 years and I replaced it with a regular cartridge at that time, so it will be a long time before I need to refill its replacement.
That said, I felt betrayed when Samsung sold its printing unit to HP too. :/
https://www.reddit.com/r/printers/comments/s9b2eg/brother_mf...
and won't dry out or get used up in cleaning cycles
On the other hand, if you live in a humid climate, toner can clump. This may explain the popularity of inkjets in Southeast Asia.
It is a shame that they stopped developing their own models.
I now own a Brother printer that is perfectly happy to print to larger paper.
The printer just stopped working from most of my computers. I tried everything.
I was going to replace it, then decided to try a 1st party cartridge again. And it’s been basically flawless again.
Such a scam.
I bought an epson workforce back some years ago. When it had printing issues i was able to do some cleaning runs and reslove. I have used ink quite a bit over time. But probably not nearly as much as the imaging drum, rollers and other parts i ended up swapping trying to stop the darkened prints on my main machine. The original laser was about 400 bucks, inkjet like 89.99. I dont think i spent more on the inkjet, even after the swaps.
But, given advertising is legal, and HP advertises much more aggressively than Brother, we can't rely on "vote with your wallet" to solve this problem. "Vote with your wallet" doesn't work when one competitor is spending money on making quality products and the other is spending money on advertising.
The entire premise that capitalism brings the best products at the lowest cost is falsified by advertising.
> And their drivers aren't user hostile?
They offer a closed-source Linux and you need to download an installer from them (an i386 binary, which also works on i686 and x86_64); so, not great. The driver is mostly-reliable, although every once in a while it does kind of give out on you and printing fails, possibly until a restart. I suppose on Windows it's better.
> really good printers that are inexpensive and live a long life?
I bought mine about 4.5 years ago; hardware seems fine so far.
> happy life
yeah, so... not so much when it comes to toners. Either the toner capacity is really low, or the MFP becomes disenchanted with toners quickly. I get "Toner Low" extremely quickly - even with only a few hundred pages printed. Granted, I don't print much these days, but still. And I've already experienced a case in which I put in a new toner and was already told it was low.
Other than that no complaints.
Similar experience with their label printers, except they only had a i386 binary, which rather killed my idea of a raspberry pi print server. Also it was generally just terrible and froze after a few labels.
A custom, single-vendor protocol? Hmm. Is it at least license-free and patent-free? ... I doubt it.
No there is no license fee.
This is just like everything else on modern operating system. Apple defines a protocol for printers and if you follow that protocol, Apple guarantees compatibility and the user doesn’t have to worry about printer drivers and the manufacturer doesn’t have to worry about creating a new printer driver when a new operating system is released.
When a Windows user updates to a new OS, they have to often go find a new driver. I connect my Mac or iOS device to my WiFI network and it automatically found all of my of my AirPrint compatible printers.
As a vendor, if I support AirPrint, my addressable market is anyone who has bought an iOS device since 2010 or a Mac since 2012.
That’s a much better system than the malware that comes with most Windows printers.
I've not tried printing to it over USB, but over Ethernet it supports IPP and mDNS so all you need to do to print is connect the printer to the network and CUPS will find it automatically.
At some point in the last ten years, network printing has gone from dark magic to just working, and in my experience working better on Linux than Mac or Windows. Printing from Android took a smidge of manual set up but now also just works when called upon. It's almost disappointing, until I remember that while I quite enjoy tinkering I also bought the printer to actually print stuff.
The scanner? Also just works over the network. Mind blown.
I recently found that there is a setting in printer admin page called "Replace Toner".
By default the printer is set to STOP printing as soon as "Toner Low" status is reached.
But we can set it to "Continue" so that it continues printing with low toner instead of immediately replacing it.
Mine has been printing fine since last 1 year after this. FYI ... I print like 10 pages in a busy month.
It just gives me "Low Toner" / "Replace Toner" warning each time and still prints just fine.
And this cartridge is a cheap $15 toner refill i had bought off Amazon 2-3 years ago.
printer : Brother DCP L2540-DW bought 8 years ago for $100.
other than occassional connectivity issues like once a year that required reinstalling printer drivers on Win 10 ... I have been super happy.
Ethernet, IPP and Postscript support are requirements.
So that they can work with generic drivers, on a range of platforms, without much setup complexity.
Don't get me wrong, it's still a decent printer, but short of what I would consider "really good".
Also, I read here in another thread that a recent firmware update also blocked third party cartridges.
> Ok now it says 01101101 and I need you to change it to 10001111.
Something to that effect. Ew.
The value proposition is especially relevant if the printers & refills themselves are simple business expenses.
Not saying the company is perfect, but there's a lot of room between the headlines and day-to-day use.
This is a really good situation for actual voting, like actual political action to have regulation, instead of pretend voting.
HP probably doesn't give a damn about the HN crowd, it won't affect their business line in the little, so there's no signaling here.
And assuming Brother gets enough of a loyal following, they can now (probably already are) jack the prices and push the envelope of what's acceptable as business practices, until you'll have to start looking around again at who's left to let you escape predatory practices.
The market of HN is small, but the market power is large. Also, I guarantee you people here make large corporate purchases for things like printers, networking equipment - stuff HP cares about.
I have family members ask to _fix_ their printers, never had one actually taking advice before buying one nor follow advice.
And the reason is simple:
- Google has a tremendous positive brand image in most people's mind, Brother means nothing outside of the elderly generation.
- Printers are seen as a commodity and get thrown at people for 30 bucks at the supermarket. They also work well for the first 30~40 prints, and while we'll bitch about printer ink price, regular people will see it as a cost of doing business and pay.
- Brother printers are reliable but actually not that good from a "what features do you have ?" customer standpoint. I ended up having a secundary HP printer for that very reason: it fits in a niche that no other sane printer maker will touch. And come to think of it, my parents bought the same HP printer after seeing use it in vacation, and they never asked about our Xerox in the living room. And yes, they buy HP cartridges (they also didn't ask me before buying...)
Large corporate purchases: nobody "buys" printer or ink. They comes with a lease and a maintenance contract, and are paid by the page. If the technician comes within 3h to fix the printer and it works ok for another 40 days, no office manager will care about what exact printers are set in the buildings.
On the other hand, Brother prevents cartridges from being reused more than once, which likely kills the market for remanufactured toner cartridges.
HP is not bricking the printers. The printers will continue to work if you put the HP cartridges back in.
I'm not condoning HP at all, not in a million years.
But the verb "disable" carries connotations of permanence, so it seems like a disingenuous word choice at best, if it's not outright clickbait. Just so people aren't confused here.
That's semi-bricking the printers.
> I'm not condoning HP at all, not in a million years.
You're semi-condoning them.
I suppose you could say that, but it would mean something quite different from what bricking normally does. And I wouldn't advise it because it sounds like a soft brick rather than "beep boop replace cartridge".
> You're semi-condoning them.
No they're not.
It's this mentality that makes internet discussions so polarized. If you allow the slightest nuance or point out that something is factually incorrect, and it happens to go against the prevailing narrative, you're accused of being a shill.
At least they should be required to compensate the users.
If that meaning was intended, the headline should read "HP disables the use of third-party ink cartridges on their customers' printers with a firmware update", or something like that.
I agree with OP that as written the headline is misleading.
No it doesn't. I can disable the safety catch or disable the alarm just fine without breaking them.
There's no HP cartridge to put back in, unless I go and buy one.
The printer is disabled until I give HP money. I call that extortion.
Then they shifted their focus to computers and began their long decent into the crappy husk of a company that they are today. The engineers who work there should be ashamed when they implement malware like this printer ink scam.
HP was definitely a player in the PC industry and has been the number one manufacturer at different times..
https://statisticsanddata.org/data/best-selling-computer-bra...
Not to mention, Intel and Microsoft kinda explicitly targeted all the market share that hp and other similar companies were leaving behind… like desktop computing at home.
HP and similar companies just were blind to that, and never adjusted/resized their research efforts to those markets (huge markets obviously).
What business does an ink cartridge have containing any significant code that could act as malware? What sort of imbecilic or evil (or both) personage designs a system that makes this even remotely possible and then sells it to the general public?
Of course there is no answer to that because it isn't a real reason, it is crap regurgitated by a PR drone who knows next to nothing about tech details and has been told to drop the phrase in to make it look like the company is defending their customers from something rather than being a something their customers need defending from…
(or worse, the PR person knows a bit about tech, so knows the malware angle is complete bunkum, and was actively lying.)
Revising/restricting the features of a product after it is sold can have legal consequences.
https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/sony-settles-linux-batt...
https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/3/20984028/playstation-supe...
Turns out, it was an official practice by HP.
I'll never use any of their products again.
By the way, Apple forcing users to install apps only via its 30% fee AppStore has provoked far less outrage. Probably because people are not directly aware of the Apple premium, in contrast to the HP premium.
You get nothing extra from buying HP first party ink otherwise they wouldn’t do this.
So it's a significant difference.
Part of the difference here is likely due to Apple primarily penalising the developers (second order effects hit the consumer). If Apple were directly hitting consumers it would be a louder series of protests.
HP are targeting the consumers, not the 3rd party suppliers, which Apple hits.
It's because it's developers who piss and moan about the 30%, while most consumers get value from having to go through the AppStore, such as 1.) being able to cancel subscriptions quickly and easily and 2.) ensuring that developers aren't abusing permissions to siphon data from the device.
iPhones and iPads, you still can do other things, it’s not a paper weight cause you rooted your device or sideloaded an emulator…
It's a turn of phrase, where you are mocking someone by accompanying their expressed sadness (or whining) by "playing the world's smallest violin", e.g. by rubbing your fingers together
Make your ink cartridge super high quality with reasonable price, I will buy it. Selling a printer at dirty cheap price and expect to recoup the discount via over priced ink cartridges? your sales and marketing department are doing it wrong, and it's not my problem at all.
Besides, who needs printers these days anymore?
That's particularly "fun" here in Italy, where (unlike in the rest of Europe), metal cylinders currently need to be removed from the car and sent to one of two national inspection centers for high pressure testing - which requires them to be empty, of course!
And unlike the oil change reminder, you can't reset it with just a button press, you need a computer interface (for which there's a fair amount of competition, but the cheapest for personal use seems to start at 60 € before shipping and is a "cloud" service)
(Because of a hidden clause in the ToS? Can you hide "we'll install ransomware on your PC" in a software ToS and enforce that, too? What's the very fine distinction between "we'll remotely disable your printer until you pay for exclusive, cryptographically-signed ink", and "we'll remotely encrypt your files and demand payments for the key?")
(It's not a particularly new idea, to extort someone under the pretense of selling them a useful service (exclusive ink). That's just "protection racket" — I think?)
If a "purchase" comes with "terms of use", it should not be classified as a purchase. It should be clearly labeled as "rent".
Low-end cartridge printers are often sold at cost or a loss. Why? Because they make the money back on cartridges. That's why you see silly things like this because third-party ink and cartridges destroys that business model. But that business model only exists because users make decisions based on sticker price for the printer. Running costs rarely enter the picture.
I saw once a camera store owner said he might sometimes make $1 selling a DSLR and then $10 on a $17 UV filter to go with it. Fast food burger places suffer from this too. McDonalds sells burgers at cost pretty much. They make all their money on the drinks and fries. The so-called "value" in meal deals is pretty much pure profit.
If you print any kind of volume, never ever buy a cartridge inkjet printer. Buy a tank printer instead.
As an aside, this issue isn't as simple as people make it out to be. The issue comes up with (for example) iPhone accessories. You can't justify Apple's prices but it's also not true that all third-party products are produced equal. Anker, in general, makes excellent products but some third-party chargers have killed people [1].
I'm sure most third-party cartridges are fine but that's not necessarily true either. Third-party manufacturers are incentivized to make things as cheap as possible. Will that ink print as well? Will it degrade printer performance over time? Who knows? It's another thing you have to worry about and that's also why these companies don't like third-party products because if poor ink clogs up a printer, who is going to get blamed?
Obviously though it's mostly the greed thing though.
[1]: https://www.macgasm.net/news/miscellaneous-news/another-man-...
Literally everybody (except printer makers) hates the printer landscape.
All we'd need is to pool money to design a cost-effective open source hardware modular monochrome laser printer with open firmware.
Plus, you'll probably meet cool people.
You had to enable higher quality prints, and use the special photo paper, of which they provided samples with the printer.
Oh and you had to wait about 5 minutes for a full page print, maybe 10. But people would say "this came from your HOME printer?" And there's all these little HP logos on the back of the photo, like a real print shop.
I was so impressed by the quality that I printed my first resume on photo paper, and was slightly confused when people were less than blown away by the appearance :-)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuWZWAfBsm8
Some 3D printers are open source.
Unfortunately, I suspect that most would not be happy with the results.
This is clearly more economical construction compared to Xerox-style laser printer. It collects the powder firstly on separate surface, heats that and then presses adhered shit to the paper.
The CEO and board who are supervising this ought to be barred from ever running a company again.
The "smash your plates" part is not adequate because the 3rd party ink cartridges are not being destroyed. If you promise to keep buying IKEA furniture they'll let you return to the house.
If you don't like the terms of this contract (I don't) then don't sign it. Easy!
it is disingenuous to frame a consumer purchase as the entry into a contract, even if that is the case much of the time.
but I do agree with the idea of boycott through avoidance.
People bought a printer to print, they were able to print, now they're not due to HP's vandalism. It's so obviously not OK. If HP can't make a printer to sell for $80 then should just not sell printers for $80.
I love how any interaction with a company means we enter into a one-sided contract with them and own nothing, despite spending money. Don't like it? Just go live in a cave!
If you are making a purely legal argument, then you are on shaky ground, and there are limits to what is considered a valid contract (especially in the EU), and what terms it may contain, but you might persuade a judge.
If you are making a moral argument, it is indefensible.
The libertarian philosophy in a nutshell. It doesn't matter if society turns into a corporate fiefdom, as long as contracts and property rights are upheld.
I'll do my part and vote to make it illegal, and not reduce myself to a mere consumer. Just like companies don't, and lobby for restrictive patent laws. What happens when one side limits itself to just (individual) consumer choices, while the other uses all political and organizational means available to gain an advantage? In other words, if two players play a game, and one of them limits themselves to only a small subset of moves, while the other uses all, which player will win?
> make that illegal.
Oh no, that's just consent between individuals. People collectively place terms you agree to by continuing to conduct business in that country. If you don't like it, take your business elsewhere - they can run their countries how they like. You're not saying organizing into companies is legitimate, but organizing into countries isn't, are you?
I am precisely saying countries are less legitimate than individuals. Governments hold and use their monopoly on force, they do not follow the rules they impose on those they govern. SpaceX can’t claim Mars and beat down anyone that challenges them, and yet that is exactly how most state borders came to be today. But again, if you’re willing to be consistent, then socialists should feel free to move to Cuba, else they consent to living under capitalism.
the question of course becomes whether or not it is worth it to litigate but that is another conversation.
The EU had forced other things nicely like walled gardens.
I would love to see a law for inter operability for third parties.
My most recent printer is an HP I bought at Costco because I knew it worked with CUPS and HPLIP on Linux and macOS. Given how many times I've seen HP pull this stunt though, I'll most likely shop for a different brand next time.
Part of this is also that HP has captured a LOT of corporate printing locations. The cost of migration for those businesses, universities and organizations is huge. I think that is why they keep getting away with this. Even if individual consumers move away from HP, they still own a huge chunk of the corporate printing market.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/10/windo...
Authentic HP ink cartridges now have an expiration date. Even when new in package, sealed, and totally fine.
A friend asked me to fix their printer. Error code was nonsensical. Eventually determined an automatic firmware update invalidated their cartridges. Only clue came from other complaints on reddit. HP had no useful info or troubleshooting advice.
Convinced friend to buy a Brother laser printer.
HP is now evil. Got the Jack Welch treatment. I blame Fiorina, Hurd, Whitman, the board, and all the other stooges, for turning a former tech gem into a punch line.
Happened to my mother who bought an HP-branded cartridge from ("shipped and sold by") Amazon, then got a warning message when she installed it a couple months later — it had "expired" a month after purchase.
Fortunately, on her particular printer at least, there was an option to ignore the warning, and the cartridge worked fine after that.
What's the story with the chip?
Worse, even the lot more expensive "office" printers (both laser and inkjets) have been sabotaged by such "driver update for your own good" shenanigans in the past. This isn't limited only to the cheapest disposable inkjet junkers.
Oh you sweet summer child. Relevant cartoon, ignoring caption: https://2.bp.blogspot.com/_U-39iprM4Cs/SfZWFzmSQ-I/AAAAAAAAA...
They ALL do it.
https://www.classaction.org/news/class-action-claims-hp-prin...
It's not quite "renting", but it's not really "owning" either because when you "buy" it, it's not just yours, but you actually share some degree of ownership of it with the manufacturer.
It would be fascinating to watch how HP responds.
I was looking at printers a year or two ago and noticed that HP's were cheaper, but it was clear from the packaging they were selling "internet" connected printers & ink subscriptions. Those were immediate red flags to me.
More recently, I decided to buy a color laser printer that can do copying so I do not need the HP anymore and will have the option of doing color prints immediately no matter how many years pass. I brought a Canon. Unlike HP printers, it lets you opt into mechanisms that disable third party toner. I just did some of the first prints with it and it is really nice.
If inkjet printer “technology” hasn’t evolved in 25 years enough to not have to worry as much about third party ink, they probably aren’t competent at printers.
Or perhaps the corollary that inkjet ink is among the, if not most expensive retail substance per ml/oz.
You buy a product capable of using any toner, then the manufacturer disables this feature without your consent to push their own margins up?
I say this as someone who has spent most of my career working on printing related software.
Fortunately we don’t print that much stuff anymore, even with kids’ assignments.
It would be an interesting case for courts indeed and solve a lot of future problems for consumers.
I accept there is more to this than that, but it's the first step.
* Sometimes it "forgets" this setting, unsure the conditions to trigger that, but I imagine the retention sloppiness of this setting versus all the other ones it remembers (admin password, etc) is not an accident.
I have had a Brother MFC-L3750CDW for 3.5 years, and have printed over 5000 pages.
Even though I always use third party toners, I haven't seen that color registration issue.
Just now, I just went to the printer and let it do the 'calibration' and 'registration' steps. Then I printed a test image from the internet. None of the colours are offset.
Oh wait, you meant...
One might have thought that the basic IP on ink expired somewhen in the 12th century.
I use older Brother laserjet printers that I bought secondhand. A pack of 2 off-brand toner cartridges are about $20 on ebay.
Enough people are dumb enough to overpay for ink that HP stays in business. Jailing a CEO won't cure stupidity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DN44n_F_CPo
Please do watch it.
His point is that this kind of horrible kind of practices corrupt and spread through industries so they need to be dealt with ASAP if you want to prevent it becoming standard.
Besides, you can't be savvy about all fields. Sure, you know about printers, but how many other facets of life you're NOT familiar with and you're duped in making choices that disadvantages you.
Owning a printer in XXI century is waste of time.
But I just have an old b/w laser
Also, when you clean the heads it ends up dumping the ink in a foam pad in the back of the printer, and that fills up and turns into a mess. I haven't looked at my pad, but that's what I saw on some YouTube videos.
Really nice for boarding passes too as the ink doesn't run when it gets wet. I know, electronic but stuff like that I prefer to have a hardcopy of.
But really if you print photo quality stuff weekly inkjet is unbeatable especially with these new tanks. I've not seen a color laser that prints acceptable photos.
So it’s easy, just buy a new printer one from a non-criminal company.
The only tougher printer was the LaserJet 3 it replaced, which was built to survive an asteroid strike.