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Comment by woodrowbarlow | Hacker News Reader

milk delivery subscriptions used to be common. when you'd cancel your membership, they'd just stop delivering. they didn't come back to repossess your unused milk.

these days each bottle would have a "smart cap" that could remotely curdle your milk in case of non-payment. it's not (historically) normal, it's not fair, but it's recently normalized because tech has enabled new ways for corporations to squeeze their customers.

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> they didn't come back to repossess your unused milk.

Well, it curdles on its own. They will come after you for the milk crate they delivered things in.

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/2016/10/03/florida-man-arrested...

https://www.milkcratesdirect.com/blog/everything-you-need-to...

Ironically your second link, which begins

>Milk crates are one of the most versatile products around and can be used for everything from storage to fishing, furniture or even gardening. And the best bit of all is that you can simply pick them up for free from outside stores, right?

>Wrong

has articles about using milk crates for gardening, seating, in classrooms, and on bicycles in the sidebar.

For example:

10 Great Uses of Milk Crates You’ve Probably Never Thought Of!

https://www.milkcratesdirect.com/blog/10-great-uses-of-milk-...

I don't follow. They're saying you can't just take them off the returns pile. As with printer cartridges, you can buy them direct and do anything you like with them... but if you got them in a milk delivery, they're still the dairy's and the dairy will want them back.

Ehh, From the website name you might infer that they sell milk crates. It stands to reason that a company which sells milk crates has lots of ideas for things to do with milk crates. It also stands to reason that a company which sells milk crates wants you to buy said milk crates from them instead of, say, stealing them.

It's fun to argue about what analogy best describes this situation, but ultimately that doesn't matter. It's really about what was advertised by the company, and what the consumer agreed to in this transaction.

it's also about increasingly hostile profit opportunities being realized and normalized, enabled by tech (its decreasing cost, increasing prevalance, and increasing internet-connectivity) despite the externalized costs (in this case, the environmental cost of destroying still-useful materials, especially materials that are quite difficult to dispose of responsibly). this is an example of profit-seeking behavior acting against the good of society and consumers (or government) should resist this increasing trend.

In this case, OP is actually part of the problem, by voting with his wallet for these "hostile profit opportunities." HP has his money, so in their eyes, his vote is for this dark pattern. By buying these products, people are ensuring they continue to act against the good of society and consumers.

EDIT: and for the down-voters, I'll clarify: I fully support OP here. OP was clearly deceived by HP's marketing. But unfortunately we live in a world created by lawyers where there is no right or wrong--there's just "what the letter of the law lets you get away with".

> milk delivery subscriptions used to be common. when you'd cancel your membership, they'd just stop delivering. they didn't come back to repossess your unused milk.

No, because they charged you $1 for every bottle they delivered. You bought the entire bottle upfront (you may have paid in arrears, but when it was delivered you agreed to pay)

Imagine instead the milkman drops 10 bottles on your doorstep. Some days you only want 1 bottle for tea and a bit of cereal, but other days you make some pancakes and need 6 bottles. At the end of the day the milkman takes back the unused milk and charges you for what you used.

Aside from the problem of milk spoiling that seems a perfectly reasonable model.

A potentially better analogy might be a library. The library borrowing model existed long before software, so one can't argue that modern software subscription models "enabled" this "predatory" practice.

I can borrow as much as I can read from the library, but I can't keep the books I haven't read at home while I am not a member. The books never really belong to me, just as the HP ink never really belong to users (until they are printed onto paper, at which point they become a constituent part of a "page" which _is_ owned by the user).

I think the cognitive dissonance arises because this "borrowing" model is being applied to a _consumable product_, which is not common.

When the product costs essentially little to nothing to manufacture - in comparison to the cost charged to the consumer - it may as well be considered a durable good to the manufacturer which allows you to "borrow" it for a fee that far exceeds the cost of lifetime replacement.

For this analogy to work the library would have to trash the books you borrowed after you cancelled your subscription.

Perhaps a train then.

I buy an annual season ticket for a London-Reading journey with a monthly direct debit.

I then decide after 3 months I no longer want to use it, so I cancel the direct debit, and my account is settled

The train still goes, I'm no longer allowed to use it.

Imagine if your kid really liked drinking a lot of milk, so the milk man gave you double the amount of bottles one morning for no extra charge. Because its an "all you can drink" membership. This is sort of what the HP service is like

Within a membership limit, HP can send you 1 cartridge of 5 at a time. The number of cartridges are not pre-determined when you start paying

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