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It's just a damn printer.

How could normal people expect that they would be sold such utter garbage?

Especially since older printers have worked just fine.

The only way to expect this is you've experienced it yourself or if you've followed news sites like HN where techies complain about shit like this.

That's exactly what happened.

My old home HP printer is about 16 years old and still rock solid. If I didn't know any better I would be recommending the brand to everyone I know. Not everyone is as depressingly online as the HN community.

It's like a group of McKinsey consultants came in, saw the stellar reputation of HP and then decided to suck it dry and make it a worthless husk.

It's like clear-cutting and strip mining a brand

I doubt the average consumer would know how terrible the HP printer experience is until they’ve bought one

Ok but is it terrible because the service was bad (frequently offline, toner would not be delivered on time, too slow, etc...) or because they changed their minds about a subscription and didn't want to pay anymore, and didn't realize the printer would stop working all together without it (most likely having forgotten this fact a year after purchase)?