HP Ink should cough up $1.5m for bricking printers using unofficial cartridges – lawsuit

Re: Wait, what?

68 cents? A refund of the cost of printing 3-7 color inkjet pages.

If they mail a check via US Mail (50 cents) with the cost and labor to print it out, would there be any amount left to give?

Re: Wait, what?

More valued than Equifax customers at 3 pence each.

Can we get any lower?

Cough DXC?

Re: Wait, what?

So ~68 cents each, even assuming that the lawyers don’t take the lion’s share (unlikely)?

How much did many have to pay their local ''IT man'' to come and look at the printer, only to realise that it could not be fixed ? The minimum should be that cost, then look at adding in other time spent farting around because of HP's shenanigans -- I think that £200 each is a good starting point.

Unless HP are made to pay something like this they will just do it again.

Re: Lexmark next

It's not just inkjets with the issue. Laser printers do this as well, plus other naughty tricks.

One of the big beefs I have with lots of different laser printer manufacturers is how they falsely state that the toner is empty even when there's tons of toner left. HP used to make it increasingly difficult to override this. I remember at my last job a colour HP printer that claimed the black toner was out (4,500 page toner). After managing to delve into the super-hidden-ultra-advanced menu (17 sub-menus down), I managed to find the override toggle to allow the printer to continue printing.

It managed about another 3,500 pages before the printing became patchy. Hence that so-called "empty" toner was actually about 40% full still when the printer decided to display the "toner out" light and stop working.

Similar story at home with our little Brother laser printer. That claimed the toner had run out ages ago. A bit of gaffer-tape over the perspex window on the side and it is still printing away perfectly fine over 5 years later.

My opinion on printer manufacturers in general? Dishonest crooks, the lot of them.

Re: Lexmark next

"the other printer manufacturers who make it almost impossible to print if you use anything other than one of their overpriced rip off cartridges"

The problem at the low end is that they've all gone for the Gillette model - the handle(printer) is free, but the blades(consumables) are expensive.

The difference being that when it comes to printers, most of the complicated bits are in the handle.

If you can stomach those $40 printers being $90, then the ink prices might come down from $70 a set to $35 (This applies to lasers too - and makers are pulling similar stunts when they detect remanufactured/compatible toner packs onboard)

Re: On the other hand...

"Printer prices are heavily subsidised by ink/toner cartridge sales, so using third-party cartridges and/or refilling using third-party ink is a bit like getting a phone on contract, running off with it after only one payment, then getting Muhammed at the market to unlock it for you."

It's not remotely like that. It's like only buying stuff when it's on offer.

@Oh Homer - Re: On the other hand...

Yep! Let's get rid of toilet paper too!

Re: On the other hand...

As a HP-er, HP has moved away from selling printers at a lost and using the sales of ink cartridges to offset these loses.

As what many of you have pointed out, ink cartridges are simply overpriced. The selling price for ink cartridges is at least 10 times of the cost price (manufacturing, labour). There is not much R&D cost involved as the technology behind thermal inkjet printing is pretty much stagnant and good enough.

Re: On the other hand...

"Personally I think it's way past time we consigned dead-tree technology to the bin, next to fax machines, floppy disks and VHS tape recorders."

Reality is catching up with your personal feelings.

Until about 6 years ago our fleet printing volume had been growing about 10-15% per year, plateaued at about 2-3 million prints/year for 3-4 years and has started declining.

Other organisations have reported similar observations. I suspect that phablets and big smartphones have a lot to do with it.

Re: broader scope

the manufacturer should not be able to remove that feature afterwards

You don't need a wider rule ... most devices have a (special purpose) computer inside. The manufacturer changing what it does, without the explicit agreement of the owner, surely falls under the computer misuse act.

Re: broader scope

personally, think there should be a wider rule - if a device has a function/feature when you buy it, the manufacturer should not be able to remove that feature afterwards

"We are altering the driver, pray we do not alter it further..."

Re: My printer

My God man. Who told you our secret ink formula? You can expect to be hearing from our attorneys.

Re: old school

Next step is to teach them arithmetics:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feeling_of_Power

Re: When do we get compensation in the UK?

Epson has some "bottles of ink" friendly printers:

https://epson.com/ecotank-super-tank-printers

Some of the models there print A3 and bigger.

Haven't tried any of them personally though.

Re: When do we get compensation in the UK?

Re: A3 printer with continuous ink supply system:

Epson & Canon, using third-party inks:

https://www.cityinkexpress.co.uk/cheap-printer-bundles

Although their ink systems do support various Brother A4 with "occassional A3" printers. suggest you email.

If you can afford the US shipping costs, take alook at: https://adaptiveink.com

Basically, I would start by searching for CISS and then find resellers who are prepared to sell a printer+CISS bundle and thus prepared to take on the compatibility and support issues.

Re: When do we get compensation in the UK?

"Just had to return £20 worth of cartridges to Viking Direct"

HereEndethTheLesson: Never put Viking Direct "compatibles" in anything you want to remain "working". Even if they actually 'go', the actual ink quality will be appalling. (and their 'own brand' pens are crap too)

Re: Printer inovation

"Is now ink DRM."

Interestingly, it seems as thought this is the last hurrah for DRM on inkjets. Lasers are eating their lunch and the makers know it. They've already given up on DRM at the high end, so they're counting on vendor lock-in to the gullible fools who buy on cheapest possible purchase price instead of TOC.

Re: The 'Trust' Factor: Toxic Patches / Firmware Updates

Get a laser printer rather than an inkjet, particularly if you're happy with a monochrome printer, because they have one or two advantages over inkjets.

For starters, if its only used infrequently it won't clog because there's no ink in it to dry out and block the print head. Even it its not been used for a month or two it will fire up and print with no fuss or cleaning issues.

Epson and HP printers use control codes, ESC/P for Epson and PCL for HP Lasers, that have been essentially unchanged for decades apart from adding extensions to support features appearing on newer printers. This means that a new printer in either range will work happily with an older driver, which can help a lot if you use older software. For instance, I was able to do anything I needed (in monochrome) in the way of printing letters, reports, envelopes etc. using a driver developed for an Epson MX-80 (9-pin dot matrix) to control an Epson Stylus 850 colour inkjet. Similarly, a driver originally set up for use with an HP Laserjet 2 worked perfectly with a Laserjet 5 and is now working just as well with my new HP Laserjet Pro M402dne.

BTW, the Laserjet M202dne came with a free 'starter' cartridge which is claimed to be good for 1500 pages. At my usual printer usage this will keep me going for several years. The full cartridge does twice that: 3100 pages. Given the capacity of these cartridges, printing should cost about 2.6p per page after I've used up the free starter cartridge. That is £80 with free delivery for an HP 26A cartridge at the cheapest current retail price found with a short search. Other estimates: 3.26p/page at Amazon prices (£91 plus a tenner P&P) or under 1p/page (eBay, £20 + guessed fiver for P&P). This probably makes a decent mono laser cheaper to run than an inkjet.