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HP disables customers’ printers if they use ink cartridges from cheaper rivals

telegraph.co.uk

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Re: HP disables customers’ printers if they use ink cartridges from cheaper rivals

#271

Post by _proofs »

alphanullmeric wrote: post #75
Bran_son wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you entered a contract in which IKEA rented you a house I love how any interaction with a company means we enter into a one-sided contract with them and own nothing, despite spending money. Don't like it? Just go live in a cave! If you are making a purely legal argument, then you are on shaky ground, and there are limits to what is considered a valid contract (especially in the EU), and what terms it may contain, b…

You signed the contract. You agreed to it, it doesn’t matter how one sided it was. You could sign a contract to eat shit for a dollar. You’re correct in that some countries restrict consent between individuals.

this is.. not how contracts work at all. contracts in bad-faith or that impose unreasonable stipulations are not exactly binding regardless of a signature.

the question of course becomes whether or not it is worth it to litigate but that is another conversation.

Re: HP disables customers’ printers if they use ink cartridges from cheaper rivals

#272

Post by znpy »

PopePompus wrote: post #133

Has there ever been another company that declined as much from its glory days as HP? During the second half of the 20th century HP was a fabled brand. They made beautiful equipment for which there was often no comparable quality alternative in the world. The pocket calculators they built in the 1980s are still sought-after, not just as collectables but also as daily drivers. They built computers during that era, but…

I would blame it a bit on standardisation… not too much, but when you drop the development of your own cpu, your own operating systems, your own hardware… you’re an oem like the others.

Re: HP disables customers’ printers if they use ink cartridges from cheaper rivals

#273

Post by joe_the_user »

gameman144 wrote: post #51
mcny wrote: post #12

The CEO and the board must serve prison time for things like this. No measure less than prison for the CEO and all board members is enough to curtail this because it just becomes the cost of doing business. No, you can’t say it wasn’t your decision. If you want to not be held accountable for the work your employees, contractors, and agents do on your behalf, you should have to prove they acted against your express wr…

I don't think prison time is even what's needed here, I think these issues would resolve themselves if corporate fines were continually issued, rather than one-off lawsuits. For instance, a standing ruling that if your printer stops being able to print for no reason other than a contract breach, then the hardware is eligible for a refund. We don't need to put CEOs in prison for making consumer-hostile decisions, we j…

I think you're fundamentally incorrect that a more consistent fine structure could fix the problems we have now.

The basic reason is that the US (and the Western World) has gone through deregulation to re-monopolization, so consumers face monopolies or oligopolies in most major markets and these entities basically make their money by selling their products as "services" in the chunk-size that makes a consume most desperate - IE, Hp will fight forever to sell 100 prints for $30 rather than 10000 prints for $120 and only hard threats can stop them (and we know the shit MS does - if MS could charge an ambulance a fee to keep their heart monitor software from killing them, they would, etc).

Re: HP disables customers’ printers if they use ink cartridges from cheaper rivals

#274

Post by themodelplumber »

local_crmdgeon wrote: post #258
throwaway81523 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monochrome lasers aren't a big problem if you shop properly. You can do fine with a 1990s era laserjet. The bigger headache is color inkjets, and the ink they consume.

A home color inkjet won't do justice basically any photo, to be fair. You'll have a better time buying a B&W document printer then going to your local photo printing shop for high quality work. Plus, you'll probably meet cool people.

Really? That'd be quite a regression. I had a mid-range home color inkjet in the year 2000 that made color prints which were easily as good as local photo printers.

You had to enable higher quality prints, and use the special photo paper, of which they provided samples with the printer.

Oh and you had to wait about 5 minutes for a full page print, maybe 10. But people would say "this came from your HOME printer?" And there's all these little HP logos on the back of the photo, like a real print shop.

I was so impressed by the quality that I printed my first resume on photo paper, and was slightly confused when people were less than blown away by the appearance :-)

Re: HP disables customers’ printers if they use ink cartridges from cheaper rivals

#275

Post by jihadjihad »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #35

Did you know Brother makes really good printers that are inexpensive and live a long, happy, life? And their drivers aren't user hostile? This is one of those really good "vote with your wallets" situations.

The last time printer shenanigans came up on HN, it was related specifically to apparent Brother shenanigans [0]. I was planning on buying a Brother at the time due to similar comments like yours, and still did so. I've been a happy customer since day 1 with the thing, it just works, even on mobile, and it's fast and quiet. I hope Brother can remain sane.

0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131

Re: HP disables customers’ printers if they use ink cartridges from cheaper rivals

#276

Post by alphanullmeric »

_proofs wrote: post #271
alphanullmeric wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You signed the contract. You agreed to it, it doesn’t matter how one sided it was. You could sign a contract to eat shit for a dollar. You’re correct in that some countries restrict consent between individuals.

this is.. not how contracts work at all. contracts in bad-faith or that impose unreasonable stipulations are not exactly binding regardless of a signature. the question of course becomes whether or not it is worth it to litigate but that is another conversation.

I described the ideal. Ideally, you wouldn’t be able to sign a contract whose contents were made transparent to you, then sue so that only the part of the contract benefitting you is upheld. Yet here we are.

Re: HP disables customers’ printers if they use ink cartridges from cheaper rivals

#277

Post by [deleted] »

avewa wrote: post #27
rvense wrote: post #20

Imagine if IKEA sent someone to your house to smash your plates if you used cutlery they didn't like. The CEO and board who are supervising this ought to be barred from ever running a company again.

A more apt analogy would be that you entered a contract in which IKEA rented you a house at a great discount and in exchange you can only furnish the house with IKEA furniture and then they caught you buying stuff somewhere else and kicked you out. The "smash your plates" part is not adequate because the 3rd party ink cartridges are not being destroyed. If you promise to keep buying IKEA furniture they'll let you ret…

[deleted]

Re: HP disables customers’ printers if they use ink cartridges from cheaper rivals

#278

Post by sebastien_b »

crazygringo wrote: post #220
kerkeslager wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But it's not up to execs, execs don't control the share price, no matter how much they wish they could. The market does. The market sees the fine, it adjusts the market cap, done. Not directly, but surely I don't need to explain to you what effect cutting costs typically has on share price? > Because shareholders elected the board. That's the entire foundation of joint-stock corporations, that shareholders get the…

> surely I don't need to explain to you what effect laying off a bunch of workers might have on share price? Surely you do, because sometimes the stock goes up if the workers weren't needed in the first place, sometimes it goes down because it shows the company is flailing, and sometimes it does nothing because it's business as usual. You're operating under an illusion that execs have control over how the market will…

[dead]

Re: HP disables customers’ printers if they use ink cartridges from cheaper rivals

#279

Post by gmerc »

crazygringo wrote: post #198
kerkeslager wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No they don't, they get passed on to shareholders. The market cap of the company decreases by the amount of the fine (plus any predicted future effect of the lost money) and the stock price goes down to reflect that. Ehh, if they have to, but execs are going to do their very best not to pass on costs to shareholders. Even if shareholders foot the bill, why would that be a desirable outcome? Are you arguing that we…

> but execs are going to do their very best not to pass on costs to shareholders. But it's not up to execs, execs don't control the share price, no matter how much they wish they could. The market does. The market sees the fine, it adjusts the market cap, done. > Even if shareholders foot the bill, why would that be a desirable outcome? Because shareholders elected the board. That's the entire foundation of joint-sto…

laughs in share buybacks
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