True, but usually you buy them from retailers... This way they cut out the middleman. And the chance that you use 3rd party inks (although, that "security risk" got patched with firmware upgrades)

Also, they don't just send you ink... It's a monthly plan where you have x pages included. Unused pages are rolled over 3 times [1] and afterwards they probably are just lost.

Further, if you cancel the subscription, containers you received within the subscription wont work anymore.

Damn, I knew it was bad, but now that I read the details it's even worse...

[1] https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/cv/instantink

[–] FierySpectre@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

Well selling the initial product at a loss is not uncommon when locking people into a subscription though

[–] fork@endlesstalk.org 10 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Sort of. You're renting the ink, not the printer. If you went to Staples or Amazon and got regular ink for the printer, it would immediately start working again.

If you buy ink from the Instant Ink program, the cartridges are sent to you for far less money than a regular cartridge. They sell page based plans where they make the money back and then new ink just shows up in the mail as you go. HP DRM's these cartridges to prevent people from skipping out on the subscription and printing normally for wayyyyyyy less up front cost.

HP printers suck. And ink sucks too. So there's a lot of understandable suckiness. But most of the criticisms about HP's ink DRM are just people mixing up Instant Ink and regular ink cartridges and getting mad they can't read instructions.

[–] Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca 5 points 11 months ago

And yet the printer was remotely disabled. If the ink is such an intrinsic part of the printer that the printer can't be used independently, than it may as well be the same thing.

You're not renting the car, just the keys!

All our hotel rooms are free for everyone! Access isn't though, sorry.

$0 phones! Only works with Comcast though...