Naming and shaming all "recurring spending models" where a one-time fee (or none at all) would be appropriate and logical.
Expect use of strong language.
Follow the basic rules of lemmy.world and common sense, and try to have fun if possible.
No flamewars or attacking other users, unless they're spineless corporate shills.
Note that not all subscriptions are awful. Supporting your favorite ~~camgirl~~ creator or Lemmy server on Patreon is fine. An airbag with subscription is irl Idiocracy-level dystopian bullshit.
New community rule: Shilling for cunty corporations, their subscriptions and other anti-customer practices may result in a 1-day ban. It's so you can think about what it's like when someone can randomly decide what you can and can't use, based on some arbitrary rules. Oh what, you didn't read this fine print? You should read what you're agreeing to.
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Some other groovy communities for those who wish to own their products, their data and their life:
Some other useful links:
Louis Rossman's YouTube channel
Look at content hosted at Big Tech without most of the nonsense:
Meanwhile, I'm laughing all the way to the bank with my Brother color laser.
Yes, the printer didn't have a low subsidized price up front. But now I can enjoy big toner cartridges that seem to last forever. And I can use all the knockoff ones I want. And the printer itself is bulletproof.
Huge fan of Brother!
We actually moved to using Brother lasers after dealing with HP’s anti-consumer nonsense one too many times. They started to refuse to distribute offline capable installers for their drivers, so we returned the rest of our stock and swore them off.
Just make sure you get the older Brothers, pre-subscription model.
Me too. Brother is a legend in these circles. Let's not jinx it.
Brother keep threating to bring in recognition of only one toner cartridge
Yes, the printer didn’t have a low subsidized price up front.
This is brought up in every thread about printers by vigilant Brother customers roaming the internet spreading the gospel. Is there is actually any proof that HP prices are subsidized? What's to stop them from having regular margins AND subscriptions (like everyone does these days) while Brother gets away with inflated margins claiming that others are selling below cost? This way both HP and Brother win.
I don't like HP either but I find ot a bit suspicious how every time Brother is mentioned its always with the remark about how their prices are totally ok.
I don't own a printer but to me does it really matter which way it's going?
HP printer: $50 Brother printer: $150 HP ink: $40 Brother ink: $20
If the brother is cheaper to run daily. Then eventually assuming the same lifespan for both the brother will be cheaper in the end.
I made up random number for my point I have no idea how much any of this actually costs so I could be way off base.
You may have made up the numbers, but I have actually seen HP inkjets for 50€. I do not believe it is physically possible to produce and distribute them at that price without taking a loss - don't forget that that price includes the seller and every middleman's profit margin.
Do not ever buy an HP printer, they are fully bloated
That would be a reason to stop using anything made by HP. One should not encourage such business practice.
A slightly off-topic anecdote: At work we use ZIP drives as our daily backup. Each day of the week has an own tape cartridge. These cartdriges were made by HP. After a while of usage we got a message that would warn of data loss, if the cardridge is not replaced by a brand new one within a certain timeframe (I think it was 30 days). So there was plenty of time to get new cartridges, right? Well, it turned out that as soon as the message popped up the cartridges were not been overwritten when we inserted the cartridge of the day. We found out two weeks later when we wanted to restore some files out of that backup. After that incident we switched the manufacturer of those tape cartridges and never hat any problems since.
We then decided not to use any HP products anymore since. I wouldn't even use a HP mouse out of principle! HP is scum.
Zip drives (do those things even exist anymore?) do not use tape cartridges, they are basically oversized floppies.
If you're actually using tape drives (LTO media, presumably), just step away from the damn HP software. I manage literal petabytes on tape, and LTO media comes with a lifetime warranty. Yes, even HP branded cartridges - there's only two actual manufacturers left, Fujifilm and, iirc, Sony.
Same for the drive, in fact - HP stopped producing them years ago, IBM is the only manufacturer left.
Oh yeah, this is awful.
I recently bought a new printer, and getting something like an HP set up on Linux was a heart-breaking experience.
It'd be really nice to have a Kickstarter for an "open-source" printer, where cartridge standards can be produced and you can buy them and use them freely.
My HP Deskjet network printer was recognized automatically by Linux Mint. I had to do nothing.
The main problem I had was that newer HP printers require it to be connected to the network using their mobile software, which was pretty janky and froze during the pairing process.
Wait...you guys still use cartridges? We've had an Epson ET-4550. No cartridges. No subscription.
I wanna know: Where is the better business bureau? Do they do any actual work to protect consumers from these shady business practices? Where's the legislation to protect consumers from this bullshit? The better business bureau isn't very useful. This type of stuff should be illegal.
They're just a company themselves. They're basically like Yelp from several generations ago... They're not a consumer protection agency so much marketing/reviews from back when it all had to be compiled on paper by hand
Yeah, I know. I guess my sarcasm didn't come through. Sorry. The best you can do is write a letter to your state's Attorney General, whose office doesn't have time to be bothered.
My states AG is too busy blocking abortions and trying to make a database of trans people so I'm sure this won't do anything sadly.
You do understand what Instant Ink is, right? You're not buying cartridges, you're buying how many pages you can print. If you cancel your subscription and run out of pages to print, it no longer lets you print anything. Call me crazy but that makes sense.
This is pretty awful in the sense that it generates waste but it's also necessary for people not to abuse the system. Think about it like this, I buy 1 month of the cheapest plan, it costs me less than 1 cartridge and 1 cartridge can print more than the maximum amount of pages of my plan, I cancel said plan and keep using cartridge. Do you see how you could "game" the system to buy insanely cheap cartridges?
There's probably a better solution though. For example, they could try to come up with a way to identify people and/or printers used in the way I described before and prevent them from signing up to the service again.
I know a better solution! Just don't have this kind of subscription! It's wasteful, takes advantage of consumers, and it's difficult to understand. It's totally inappropriate to sell a printer to someone and limit / control their use of it with a subscription. The world of printing at home with HP needs a reboot, restarting again from: buy the printer and the supplies for it, print the things. This is why I've been using printers that are not HP since forever. In the old days, HP ink was the most expensive to buy but the printers were very cheap, the cheapest you could find at any store. This company has spent decades and decades controlling the ink and trying to get people to pay for the ink. It all started with being the cheapest printer at the store and being the most expensive ink at the store. 30 years or so later (plus or minus) we have this insanity. I like my setup for home printing. My printer, my ink, my paper. I print all I want.
It's optional. If you don't like it, don't buy it. You can't complain because the service works as described.
IMO this subscription model only makes sense if you have a business and print a lot of pages per month. For a normal user it doesn't make much sense.
Stop with this bullshit. This is exactly the kind of bullshit subscriptions this community is against.
Where's the EU when you need them? It's due time we force printer companies to let us use any ink without a subscription
Bought a cheap HP printer about 10 years ago, max usage is maybe 50 prints a month, most months maybe less than 10, most times 0. Sits there and indeed it's bloaty software is the most painful.
Funny how different the same company can appear to different people. My current printer from HP (maybe 2 or 3 years old) is the best I ever had. Sure, it offered a subscription for the ink, but after a quick calculation I knew that I would waste my money with that so I chose not to sign it. And now I have the first printer I've ever seen that answers "I don't care about yellow, the text is blank and white" with "okay" and starting to print.
And that is not even something positive, just not a negative thing. Thats what should still be treated as the default behaviour.
The article is nonsense though. They signed up for a service where HP would send free cartridges as long as they keep the monthly subcription. Of couse they can't get a full cartridge and then just cancel the subscription...
It's like complaining that you can't finish watching that show on Netflix, that you downloaded to save mobile data, after you cancel your Netflix subscription.
The problem I have with it is that HP also bricks third party ink. Basically they bought a printer that's useless without a subscription fee. I don't think that's right.
This would be why I simply wouldn't purchase one of those printers.
Not trying to be a dick here, but it's not like any of this is a secret. If you're dropping a non-trivial amount of money on a printer, and additionally signing up for a subscription to boot, is it not prudent to actually learn about what you're buying?
I'm not saying it's a good thing... but they agreed to that. You can't first agree to bullshit, and then complain that it's bullshit ._.
I fully agree with you and decided to post that to give your downvoters an additional downwards-arrow to demonstrate even more that they don't read the EULA nor TOS before agreeing :-)
The point is how shitty it is to have a subscription for ink on the first place.
And if you do have one (it might make sense for businesses and such), then it should be set up so that yes, you can use all the ink, to cut down the waste.
Besides it's known that HP uses enough dark patterns that people aren't sure what they're signing up for.
And just check what community you're in :p
Also, how tf are those cartridges free? This is exactly the kind of bullshit language companies like that want you to use.
Also also yes, DRM is fucking cancer too. Way to give an example.
Can’t speak for the article because all it leads me to is a photo disguised as a video without much context and pop-up galore.
That said, it’s a bit more nuanced that you make it out to be. HP uses some very shitty dark patterns.
Used to be that printers came with a set of starter ink cartridges.
HP nowadays uses Schrödinger’s ink called “HP Instant Ink Ready” cartridges.
If you never sign up for the HP Instant Ink subscription (incl. trials), then the cartridges that in the box will just be like the starter cartridges you’re used to.
If you however sign up for the subscription **or its ** trial, then the cartridges are changed into Instant Ink cartridges and will refuse to work once the trial is up and/or cancel the subscription.
I can see how people would expect to be able to use the cartridges that came with the printer like they always have been able to before HP pulled this nonsense.
It’s bad enough that this isn’t clearly and explicitly communicated with the customers.
What’s worse is that during setup of the printer (and in the marketing materials for the printer) customers are offered and asked if they want X months ink for free, without much indication that this is a trial for a subscription service.
Even worse that is not ink based, but per pages printed. Or to put it more bluntly: it’s a subscription that, depending on the tier chosen, gives you X amount of pages to print per month (paper needs to be provided by yourself) and HP will automatically send you ink to ensure you can print that amount of pages.
However, in all the marketing HP emphasizes ink and ink subscriptions (or “free” ink), and only after spending time looking into details can you figure out that you don’t pay for the ink, but for pages.
Here’s an example of how they market it as “6 months free ink”:
That ink is not free, because if after 6 months you cancel the trial, that ink is unusable.
Of course they can’t get a full cartridge and then just cancel the subscription
Is that so self-evident?
Classically (and HP also still has this as an option somewhere hidden away I believe) these kind of subscriptions used to be supply subscriptions.
For X amount a month we’ll send you Y amount of supply and it was yours to keep and do as you see fit, nowadays it’s often marketed as “auto-ship” across many web shops and comes with a marginal discount, but there are also plenty of examples that just call it a subscription (e.g. razor blade subscriptions).
That ink is not free, because if after 6 months you cancel the trial, that ink is unusable.
If you could use if after 6 months, it would be more than 6 months of ink..?
Either you like the deal or not. You can't be mad at it because you wanted to outsmart it but then you couldn't.
The point is that “6 months free ink” is misleading whichever way you look at it because it’s ambiguous since ink isn’t measured in months.
Even if your reading of it would be the intended reading, then it’s still misleading because it’s just a 6 month trial for a per page subscription. Or put differently: if you surpass the monthly allocation of pages, you would have to pay, making it not free.
Given that neither the trial component nor the per page component is mentioned in the image and given the fact that the offer is ambiguous, there isn’t much to like or dislike about the deal because the deal as presented is false and non-existent.
Moreover, you conveniently sidestep all the other issues I’ve mentioned.
Like the fact that people receive cartridges with their printer that will be rendered useless with no clear warning on the box that this will happen or how to prevent this, instead they’re listed on the box in the same fashion other printer manufacturers list their cartridges that don’t get rendered useless.
Just go away, we don't need shills here.
Fuck I hate this kind of comment. Not every one who disagrees with you on a company practice is a shill. In this case they even call it bullshit themselves, they are making a point about understanding what you sign up for.
Do you read every word in every EULA you click on "agree"? Do you consult with a lawyer and experts about every little detail what it may mean? Do you actually understand and agree on everything?
All these bullshit practices are scum. A person above has written in detail what kind of bullshit dark pattern trash companies like HP use. People accidentally signing for this ink crap is all over the internet, because it's not fucking normal to need to read 50 pages of gibberish shit contract when you buy a fucking printer.
And in no, no circumstances is it normal to design a service for a printer that a customer buys that lets them print only a certain number of pages and then makes the rest of the ink unusable. If nothing else, it creates waste.
Printer companies have been using shitty practices when it comes to ink for 2 decades, HP always being the worst. This is their latest crap and way over the line. If you think this is okay, then you're a shill and you indeed don't need to be here. Go to some community that licks the boots of all these corporations.
If I subscribe to a magazine they don't take the last magazine away when I cancel. This is a physical product, not an online product like Netflix.
