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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

#281

Post by _greim_ »

crazygringo wrote: post #85
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…

Why not send top stockholders to prison while you're at it? And regional managers as well? And the stores that sell the printers too? No, prison makes zero sense. When people agree to a business contract and one side fails to uphold their end of the bargain, the remedy should remain financial. And punitive remedies exist precisely to make sure the "cost of doing business" makes it no longer profitable. And if that's…

> Why not send top stockholders to prison while you're at it?

Or just curtail every holder's shares by a fixed percentage, if/when a publicly-owned company is found to have engaged in anti-competitive behavior. If the incentive of maximizing shareholder value is no longer aligned with the interests of society, maybe that's how to fix it.

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

#282

Post by wst_ »

pcai wrote: post #193
jorvi wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much. Yesterday I wanted to grab some Fanta for in the park. A 0.33L can would’ve been too little, but a 1L bottle too much, and a 1.5L bottle far too much. 0.50L was the perfect size. The pricing? 0.33L - €0.66 (€2.00 per L) 0.50L - €1.48 (€2.96 per L) 1.00L - €1.93 (€1.93 per L) 1.50L - €2.09 (€1.39 per L) Initially this made me angry, as it is very clear they figured out that the 0.5L bottle is the most con…

Just buy 2 of the 0.33L! You already did the math!

I assume it's a can. No go for me. Not sure about OP. The convenience of half litre bottle is that it's relatively small and you can keep it closed.

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

#283

Post by Kinrany »

kerkeslager wrote: post #174
pydry wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Corporate fines just end up being passed on to workers who had nothing to do with the decision. "We had to (lay off 10% of our workforce|cut worker pay by 10%|etc.) because of these unfair fines." This is like "if you raise the minimum wage we'll only have to lay people off" which is equally self serving and utterly, completely wrong. Employees dont pay. Shareholders pay. If they could have fired 1 employee and coll…

> If they could have fired 1 employee and collected a bit of extra profit they would already have done so. But they couldn't pay workers less or decrease workforce, because they needed those workers to execute the unethical business plan. They weren't waiting for a fine to cut workers, they were waiting for the cash cow to stop producing milk to cut workers who were necessary to keep the cash cow going.

That's a completely different argument, and a worse one at that.

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

#284

Post by FrontierPsych »

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…

Workers, yes, but mainly consumers. A million dollar fine, if you sell 500,000,000 cartridges (just a guess, but in 2012 I searched and saw they sold 315 million worldwide) means they would have to charge .2 cents per cartridge to pay for the fine. ''

I hardly think that issuing any fine would make them care. Why would the CEO give one little tiny shit about a million dollar fine, or a ten million dollar fine for that matter. They just pass it on to the consumer. And that is only passing on the cost of the fine only to the ink division. They could easily pass on the costs to all departments.

Fines are silly and useless. I guess if they were to have a $500 million fine, that would get the company's attention, but I don't see that ever happening, honestly.

But I think if they put the C-suite and board of directors into jail for 8 years, that would have a major effect on all boards and executives.

And right now, corporations are claiming supply chains and inflation for raising their prices, yet they have the largest profits ever. This can only mean that they are raising their prices but their costs are staying the same or rising very little. All of them should be put in prison - robbing the poor and middle class to put that wealth in the hands of the rich. More siphoning money from the poor and middle class. Put them in prison, I say. Make some example. This is not about price controls, but against holding the US population hostage. Is there collusion? Because that is against the law. That is not controlling prices. Collusion is collusion.

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

#285

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#286

Post by smabie »

_greim_ wrote: post #281
crazygringo wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not send top stockholders to prison while you're at it? And regional managers as well? And the stores that sell the printers too? No, prison makes zero sense. When people agree to a business contract and one side fails to uphold their end of the bargain, the remedy should remain financial. And punitive remedies exist precisely to make sure the "cost of doing business" makes it no longer profitable. And if that's…

> Why not send top stockholders to prison while you're at it? Or just curtail every holder's shares by a fixed percentage, if/when a publicly-owned company is found to have engaged in anti-competitive behavior. If the incentive of maximizing shareholder value is no longer aligned with the interests of society, maybe that's how to fix it.

This is exactly what a fine does tho?

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

#287

Post by M95D »

oxfordmale wrote: post #91
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…

Just stop buying HP printers. If you bought and it is still under warranty, ask for a full refund. You likely won't get it, but make sure HP waste as much time as possible dealing with this In the UK it is even worth considering to take this to the small claims court. Of course seek legal advice first. The only way HP gets away with this, because people just accept this kind of behaviour.

Most HPs are bought by companies. People who decide to buy HP are not those that use them and not even those that refill them.

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

#288

Post by agentgumshoe »

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…

Sounds like an idealised view of it. In reality I would think shareholders are ok with any plan the exec/board has to avoid such losses

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

#289

Post by vr46 »

joering2 wrote: post #155
wongarsu wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or buy a laser printer. They cost a bit more upfront, but a single toner cartridge lasts ages (and won't dry out or get used up in cleaning cycles), the printers are generally much more robust and longer lasting, and because laser printing isn't as patent-encumbered there's more actual competition and less outright user-hostile behavior.

I would like to vouch for Xerox laser printers. Not only they don't identify your printouts with tiny yellow markings/serial number, but also they gladly accept off-market toners, and places like Amazon have many different brands that race to the bottom of price making it easy to try out what works for you. I am on my third Xerox laser printer and couldn't be happier.

I bought an awesome Xerox duplex colour laser two years and can confirm. Superb. Way better than the Samsung/HP thing it replaced. About to put more after-market toners in tomorrow

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

#290

Post by largeluke »

gizmo wrote: post #156
boycott-israel wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a surprisingly naive thing to say in the era of a CEO having a fiduciary duty to maximise shareholder-value over the short-term / their tenure (whichever is shorter)

This is a myth that refuses to go away. A business can go in whatever direction it chooses, even if it hurts shareholders, employees, or other stakeholders by doing so. Anything short of directly looting the company coffers by directors is fine in a legal sense. Shareholders can just sell if they lose faith in leadership, or put pressure on the board.

That's not right either, the board and officers have fiduciary duty to act in shareholders' interest and to use reasonable business judgment. Less strict than maximizing profit, but more strict than anything-legal-goes.
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