More HP printer joy - old news, not new horrors

[thewayne]

An HP exec at a business conference said the quiet part out loud that they've been pursuing a multi-year strategy to lock-in customers to their printers.

Uhm, DUH.

Why do you think a lot of people have been campaigning to get people away from HP products and on to less restrictive printers, or on to lasers, which have a much lower cost over their lifetimes?

In this case this was their CFO Marie Myers saying "We absolutely see when you move a customer from that pure transactional model ... whether it's Instant Ink, plus adding on that paper, we sort of see a 20 percent uplift on the value of that customer because you're locking that person, committing to a longer-term relationship."

Absolutely nothing new here, just some amusement at her saying the quiet part out loud. In front of reporters.

https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/04/hp_printer_lockin/

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/23/12/04/1928253/hp-exec-says-quiet-part-out-loud-when-it-comes-to-locking-in-print-customers


The other news item is that HP is being sued - again - for bricking printers for using third-party ink. Zero surprise factor here. This is not far from saying that I must buy a Subaru battery and Subaru disc brake pads for my Subaru car.

Again, Brother printers and lasers are your best friend. Avoid HP like the plague that it is.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/hp-sued-again-for-blocking-third-party-ink-from-printers-accused-of-monopoly/

Comments

[armiphlage]

I bought my first and last HP printer in 2001. It didn't work, right out of the box. Their help desk wanted me to enter a credit card number before they'd troubleshoot.

[thewayne]

Wow.  And that might have been pre-Carley, I don't remember exactly when she was CEO.  I think it was just after the merger with Compaq.  I owned an HP scanner, I think I tossed it when it proved to be incompatible with either Mac or newer OSes.  If there's one thing certain about HP, they've been a real piece of work the last 25 years or so.  I can say I've never owned any of their inkjets, I did own one of their color lasers - and it was a very good piece of kit.  It was before they got really hard-core on their cartridge DRM.

[moxie_man]

Yeah, we still have two working HP-4700 color laser printers in the office, circa 2003. They were due to be retired last summer as part of some uni-system wide contract with Xerox replacing all our b&w network copier/scanners with color ones. Due to our office lease coming due this June (we must move prior to then), there has been a delay in us getting the new color copier/scanner. I'll miss the 4700s. They've been very reliable workhorses, despite how expensive the toner is.

[thewayne]

We have a monster B&W duplexing dual feed HP.  Had to have a feeder fixed last year, I think they had to replace it.  That's been the extent of its service in the five years that I've been there, but it's not hammered.  We use it for spine labels and back of the house printing.

[disneydream06]

Wonder if she was meant to say that out loud or if she's getting a slap on the wrist now?
Hugs, Jon

[thewayne]

She was talking at a business conference, I expect she was bragging.  As to whether or not she was slapped on the wrist, who knows.

[disneydream06]

UGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[dewline]

Eurgh.

[silveradept]

Given how much HP believes itself the proverbial 900-pound monster, it's probably not a surprise to see them talking so openly about the tricks they use to lock people into their products.