EFF: HP Must Make Amends For Self-Destructing Printers

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It looks like the Electronic Frontier Foundation has sent a letter to HP asking the company to reverse its recent firmware update that blocks customers from using 3rd party ink cartridges. Selling printers that use proprietary ink isn't new but updating a printer to block aftermarket cartridges after people have already bought the printer has raised the ire of many consumers.

HP customers should be able to use the ink of their choosing in their printers for the same reason that Cuisinart customers should be able to choose whose bread goes in their toasters. The practice of "tying" is rightly decried by economists and competition regulators as an invitation to monopoly pricing and reduced competition and innovation. HP customers should choose HP ink because it is the best, not because their printer won't work with a competitor's brand.
 
It would be nice if the EFF could reverse this, but HP are basically dicks when it comes to their printers. I've forgone inkjets. Only laser now. HP still dicks. The obscene prices they charge for their cartridges and toners is gouging.
 
Read a few minutes ago that HP is planning on reversing the update 'This time'. No promises on future updates.

I think HP should face one count of computer hacking for each printer impacted by the update since HP knew what the update did and knowingly distributed it via a computer network. The government has put folks in jail for less harmful computer crimes.
 
It is a business model, I ain't hating on the high(er) cost of replacement commodities...I do it in my industry in the form of replacement parts. I can't sell a job equipment at a reasonable mark-up...too much competition, so I practically give it away in hopes of regaining that margin through the aftermarket. Too many printer choices, practically give the printer away, sometimes at a loss, in hopes of regaining it through replacement ink. Now changing after the fact through updated firmware...yikes!
 
I recently bought a Brother MFC-J4410DW for $100 and bought special refillable cartridges for $40 that came with enough ink to refill it 3 times. When I ran out, I spent $16 for ink that can refill the cartridges 3x over. Even though I did refill my HP ink cartridges, they were a pain in my ass. And since the print head is built into the cartridge, when it fails I was forced to buy another one.

BTW the Brother prints fast, like super fast compared to my old HP printer. Yea I still use inkjet but I spend next to nothing for ink. Paper is more expensive for me than the ink.
 
Last night my printer flashed a message that I wasn't using genuine HP ink (I definitely AM). God I hate printers.
 
HP used to give a warning on printers using aftermarket cartridges (as it affects the warranty situation) but still allow them to print, which I thought was reasonable enough especially if someone conned you into paying OEM cartridge price for refills.

This is going too far, I'm getting the Keurig vibe from this and we all see how well that worked out.


Transparency notice: I used to be a service engineer for HP Canada's CPO division.
 
This is like when my HP Laserjet printers start giving me warnings, even over the network, that the "toner is low", when in reality less than half of the toner has been used. Thousands of pages later the toner eventually starts to run out. Makes you wonder how many people simply replace it right when the warnings start. Was actually reporting the correct amount of toner in a cartridge ever even a consideration for HP?
 
Doing so and stating that's it being done before purchase (e.g. disclaimer openly says you can only use official consumables)? Ugly practice, but it's a mainstay of the printer industry (often selling printers at cost or below cost in a loss-first method). They used to (maybe still do?) - among many others - also chip their cartridges so that they have a limited amount of prints irregardless of actual ink capacity (and to prevent them from being refilled). That's sorta like putting 20 gallons of gas in your car, only to have the car count stops/starts (not fuel consumption) and then tell you it requires more gas to run.

There's a few companies who have brought this business model to the 3d printer industry. Offer cheaper printer, but make it up on chipped overpriced consumables.

Releasing a firmware after the fact to block you from doing something that was not originally disclaimed at time of purchase? Better offer a refund or get sued.

Tawnos said:
You sure? Magnuson–Moss Warranty Act (and a better explanation: MLM Law - Understanding the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act)

Short version: tie-in sales aren't allowed to demand buying a particular brand if the company cannot prove that an alternative would damage the product.
Click to expand...

That's a law everyone should bookmark. So many companies ignore it. It's the same law that makes those "void" stickers unenforceable .. even though many still try to use them as a way to get out of warranties.
 
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Stuff like this has to stop. Period. How many billions can you possibly make in a year and think pulling a stunt like this is considered ethical HP? Just on the subject of printers though.... Seriously... Printers still do the same thing... I understand advancement for things but in the end... Don't need a gazillion new models each year that take different cartridges but still actually do the same thing as older printers do. On top of that engineering a product life cycle for the sole purpose of buying a new and improved (supposedly) is also poor taste.
Why can't they be more ingenuitive like when when they made that tiny printer. Why not make one small enough to fit into a laptop.
 
Great Tiger said:
Stuff like this has to stop. Period.
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Agreed. I avoid buying products that tie me to using the vendors over priced consumables.
When I buy laser printers for the office, I make sure that there are 3rd party toner cartridges available. I use the OEM cartridges while they are under warranty, but switch to 3rd party (at 1/3 the price) after the year is up. Same for the ink jet and laser printers I have at home.

Dell pulled this with their servers several years ago. They stopped allowing the use of non-Dell drives on their server/raid cards. They quickly reversed themselves, but it's still irritating that they mark the drives with a warning for not being Dell drives. We usually get Dell drives when we order the server, but I'm not going to pay Dell's prices (2-3x higher) when I upgrade the storage on a 3 year old server. I only use server level drives (usually better drives than what Dell re-labels) , and have had better luck with them than I have with actual Dell drives.

It's not just computers/printers either.
I was shopping for a new fridge, and many of them have a built in water filter that tends to be expensive.
At least one brand I was looking at now puts a chip on their filters so you can't use a 3rd party one. It disables the water/ice if you don't have a filter with the chip installed. That brand was removed from my list, so this caused them to lose a sale. And yes. the 3rd party filters are usually not as good, but let me decide what filter to buy and what I am willing to pay.
The fridge I bought not only charges less for their own filters, but there are plenty of third party ones at much better prices.
 
Shotglass01 said:
It would be nice if the EFF could reverse this, but HP are basically dicks when it comes to their printers. I've forgone inkjets. Only laser now. HP still dicks. The obscene prices they charge for their cartridges and toners is gouging.
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Way back in the day, HP had really crappy slow drivers (Pentium 1 days). Then they released a driver that added MMX support and sped up the printing by at least 500%. Only they were charging $15 for the driver update.

HP has and always will be a bunch of jerks in regards to their printers. Just look at their past and present actions.

And if you have a color laserjet from them, you better make sure to disable the toner metering as it will tell you they are empty when there is still at least 66% left.

NEVER EVER buying an HP printer for my personal use if at all possible.
 
Am I misremembering things when I say I thought it was illegal to block third party cartridges?
 
I agree with that this is a shitty practice, but you have to consider WHY they do it.

They sell people printers well below cosy,. (sometimes as low as 10% of what they cost to manufacture) with the expectation that they'll make it up in ink cartridge sales.

When too many people start using third party cartridges it is a threat to the very existence of their printer business.

I would much prefer that they sold printer hardware in and of itself for profit, and let the supplies fall as they may, but given that this is what the printer market looks like, it's not difficult to understand their motives.

On a side note, I'll never buy another ink printer from any manufacturer. Use the printer a lot, and it runs out and you need to buy new expensive cartridges. Use it sparingly and the ink dries and you need to buy new expensive cartridges, every time you print...
 
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Some people are missing the most important point here, which is that, thanks to the DMCA, it is illegal for you to try to fix this problem yourself.

Without the dmca, hp would quite probably not have bothered as there would have been a patch-your-firmware-program freely downloadable faster than you can say "let me use my own ink".
 
DukenukemX said:
I recently bought a Brother MFC-J4410DW for $100 and bought special refillable cartridges for $40 that came with enough ink to refill it 3 times. When I ran out, I spent $16 for ink that can refill the cartridges 3x over. Even though I did refill my HP ink cartridges, they were a pain in my ass. And since the print head is built into the cartridge, when it fails I was forced to buy another one.

BTW the Brother prints fast, like super fast compared to my old HP printer. Yea I still use inkjet but I spend next to nothing for ink. Paper is more expensive for me than the ink.
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I went with a Brother last year, glad I did after reading all this HP stuff too. I found amazon has some pretty cheap ink carts for brother and they last a good bit, might be worth a look, they last about 90% of what the Brother brand ones do but you can get 2 sets for less than half a name brand set. I find refilling any carts to be a pain.
 
Shotglass01 said:
It would be nice if the EFF could reverse this, but HP are basically dicks when it comes to their printers. I've forgone inkjets. Only laser now. HP still dicks. The obscene prices they charge for their cartridges and toners is gouging.
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Same here, bought a Samsung laser about 7 years ago for peanuts, £50.
Its always ready immediately, never needs a head clean which waste ink and when not used for a long time I dont need to replace the cartridge because its dried out.
I saved an incredible amount of money over those years and it is still working perfectly.
 
HP using updates to block people's printers from working is enough to thoroughly cement my opinion to never ever buy or recommend a personal HP printer.
They're just hurting their own reputation and future bottom line with these petty acts.
 
cyclone3d said:
And if you have a color laserjet from them, you better make sure to disable the toner metering as it will tell you they are empty when there is still at least 66% left.
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I have several HP Color Laser printers at the office, and I just used a web browser to connect to the Ethernet port and set the toner empty warning setting to 1%.
Occasionally the users report light printing on one of the colors before the printer says the toner is out, so I know the metering is pretty close.

I still prefer HP Laser printers as I've had great luck with them (I've had some go over 300,000 pages).

Ink jets are a different story, as I've always felt HP ink prices where too high and the lack of 3rd party ink (don't like refills) made them too expensive.
The older Epson's where great, excellent photo printing, even with generic ink.
I used a few Brother all-in-ones, but quality was so-so and they don't seem to last more than a couple years. At least they where cheap.
Currently using a Cannon All-in-one that has been working great the last couple years with generic ink.
 
Great Tiger said:
Stuff like this has to stop. Period. How many billions can you possibly make in a year and think pulling a stunt like this is considered ethical HP?
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I'm pretty sure the ethics of filling landfills with self-destructing printers has nothing to do with it. It's obviously an extremely profitable practice the way it's set up. It's just capitalism in its purest form.
 
Went to a Canon wireless laser printer and haven't looked back. I will say my last HP color inkjet printer lasted me ~10 years and is now in use by my mother in law. HP 21 and 22 cartridges for years.
 
Nenu said:
Same here, bought a Samsung laser about 7 years ago for peanuts, £50.
Its always ready immediately, never needs a head clean which waste ink and when not used for a long time I dont need to replace the cartridge because its dried out.
I saved an incredible amount of money over those years and it is still working perfectly.
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At home I have an old Dell 1720 laser printer that I picked up at a thrift store for $7.

The drum light was flashing when I got it. Looked it up online before I bought it and followed the button presses to reset it.

Over the last 5 or so years I have refilled it twice and bought one new toner as the drum on the toner cart assembly finally went bad.

Not bad for a total outlay of about $60 for 5 years including toner.

The fuser is starting to die on it though so as soon as it does, I will be replacing it. A new fuser is about $75. Maybe I should just get a new fuser for it. hmmm.

Wifey wants a color laser though. Maybe just keep the Dell to print black since it is so incredibly cheap to print to and get a color for only printing color.
 
cyclone3d said:
Wifey wants a color laser though. Maybe just keep the Dell to print black since it is so incredibly cheap to print to and get a color for only printing color.
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I'd really recommend just ordering color prints from Costco, Walmart, or even Walgreens over owning a color laser. You'll save hundreds and have better quality to boot.
 
DocSavage said:
I'd really recommend just ordering color prints from Costco, Walmart, or even Walgreens over owning a color laser. You'll save hundreds and have better quality to boot.
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For photos, no doubt. I'm talking just for regular color for paper, kid's art pages, etc.
 
HP will losses this this one if it goes court. The fact is for inkjet printer; they printers are pretty much GIVEN AWAY for the purpose of selling the ink to the customer.
A knock-off ink maker with no skin in the game is making the revenue and not HP so you can understand HPs motives.

Xerox has a patented "solid ink" printer; a technology developed by Tektronix they purchased the patents for. A knockoff ink supplier attempted to reverse engineer the patented ink formula and came up with something that worked, temporarily. Long term use damaged the printers print head assy; which rendered the printer uneconomical to repair. Of course to the customers they are screaming "Xerox printer are junk!"
This was such a problem for Xerox they sued the company making the knockoff ink and L O S T. The judges opinion was the customer had the right to buy consumable from any vendor they wanted. Can you believe how asinine ?
That is like buying a car and insisting to run kerosene instead of gasoline. When it finally dies, then blaming the car maker.
 
cyclone3d said:
For photos, no doubt. I'm talking just for regular color for paper, kid's art pages, etc.
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Just check your cost per page. I've straight up tossed a couple big HP color lasers here at work because it was about $600 for the set of toner.
 
Its an HP feature called Jetintelligence. I sell these all day. In the settings you can turn that feature off.
 
Dr. Righteous said:
HP will losses this this one if it goes court. The fact is for inkjet printer; they printers are pretty much GIVEN AWAY for the purpose of selling the ink to the customer.
A knock-off ink maker with no skin in the game is making the revenue and not HP so you can understand HPs motives.

Xerox has a patented "solid ink" printer; a technology developed by Tektronix they purchased the patents for. A knockoff ink supplier attempted to reverse engineer the patented ink formula and came up with something that worked, temporarily. Long term use damaged the printers print head assy; which rendered the printer uneconomical to repair. Of course to the customers they are screaming "Xerox printer are junk!"
This was such a problem for Xerox they sued the company making the knockoff ink and L O S T. The judges opinion was the customer had the right to buy consumable from any vendor they wanted. Can you believe how asinine ?
That is like buying a car and insisting to run kerosene instead of gasoline. When it finally dies, then blaming the car maker.
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If the companies priced their consumables reasonably, people wouldn't use third party supplies.
 
Wasn't this mostly or exclusively for OfficeJet models? Not that it makes the scummy thing HP pulled any better, but it does limit the scope.

As a reminder, turn off automatic firmware/driver updates on Windows. Always.
 
DocSavage said:
Just check your cost per page. I've straight up tossed a couple big HP color lasers here at work because it was about $600 for the set of toner.
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And HP toner is WAY, WAY overpriced. You can go 3rd party and get the toners for probably 40-60 a piece. But even that is overpriced for me.

And if you get a printer that you can refill the toner in, you can get super cheap.

Seeing anywhere from $25 - $65 on eBay for a full refill kit with chips depending on the printer.

The ones that are $25 bring the cost per page to 2.5c because they are only 1,000 page yield.

The ones that are $65, bring the cost per page to a max of 0.65c a page as the page yield is 5,000 and the bottles that come with it can refill the toner 2-3x (I went with the low end of 2x. If I say 3x, then the cost per page is 0.43c per page.)

Edit: for a 2pk of toner refill for my Dell 1720, it is $24. That makes the cost per page 0.2c

I could lower it even more if I bought a 4pk. I could bring the cost down to 0.16c per page.
 
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DocSavage said:
If the companies priced their consumables reasonably, people wouldn't use third party supplies.
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That is a BS argument; no matter where they were priced, there would be a knock off priced cheaper.
And like I said; the knock-off ink suppliers have no skin in the game. They are not spending the money to R&D the printers and the technology. The industry looks at these companies as parasites.
 
Why can't another company get into business, sell the printers for profit, and cheap inks with lower margins by default?
Inks can be packaged much cheaper I would think too, they could just be some little plastic baggies you attach/stab somehow.
 
Uvaman2 said:
Why can't another company get into business, sell the printers for profit, and cheap inks with lower margins by default?
Inks can be packaged much cheaper I would think too, they could just be some little plastic baggies you attach/stab somehow.
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Initially laser printers were designed to be very economical. But because people were too lazy to keep up with a toner, developer, image drum, etc; the winning design was a all these consumable parts in 1 complete cartridge. That is what people wanted, they got it and it is expensive.
 
I have an HP printer, but it's still got the ink it came with when I bought it. I mean let's see, what do I print on it?

... Amazon return labels and...

...

...

Amazon return labels.


My master's degree coursework is all online (GA Tech OMSCS), so I literally have nothing to print out except Amazon return labels. That's literally the only reason I even have a printer except scanning/printing government documents, but that's rare.
 
Dr. Righteous said:
That is a BS argument; no matter where they were priced, there would be a knock off priced cheaper.
And like I said; the knock-off ink suppliers have no skin in the game. They are not spending the money to R&D the printers and the technology. The industry looks at these companies as parasites.
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This is ridiculous; ink requires rather a little amount of R&D.

HP should just charge the proper amount for the printer. We don't have this kind of printer-ink lockin for cars-gas, washing machines-water/detergent, coffeemaker-coffee, and so on.
 
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