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.
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.
Just make sure you get the older Brothers, pre-subscription model.
Yeah, me too! I have a Brother laser printer that's been sailing along now for 10 years. Recycled toner cartridges work on it and cost me very little money. I can also use recycled drums when I have to replace the drum. I don't like my real brother very much, but my Brother laser printer is the bomb.
Do not ever buy an HP printer, they are fully bloated
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.
I think the more important question is where is the CFPB? I thought they were supposed to have teeth in preventing shit like this.
I’d be curious to know how many complaints about HP get submitted and never resolved.
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.
Stop with this bullshit. This is exactly the kind of bullshit subscriptions this community is against.
I know this isn't news, but hey, gotta keep shit like this in circulation.
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.
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.
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
