Tag Archives: Rip-off

Fuck You, HP!

office-spaceExpiring ink? You’ve got to be kidding me!

Is Hewlett-Packard the world’s worst company? OK, no. Not as long as Monsanto exists, but still pretty bad.

I mean, look, here’s what I want: An inexpensive printer that, on those occasions when I need to print something, actually prints my document on a piece of paper. Is that too much to fucking ask? According to HP it is.

It’s bad enough that their printing software is absolute bug-filled CRAP. It’s absurd how many extra pieces of detritus it takes to achieve at long-last the prized correctly-printed page I crave. And it’s ridiculous that I have to wait through endless minutes of clicking and buzzing before this piece of shit printer finally decides it’s ready to print. Assuming of course, I didn’t have to just restart everything to reconnect the idiotic software to the system so it can decide to print out my one fucking sheet of paper. Oh and shall we talk about how I can’t print a document right now because it’s 10 p.m. so the stores are closed and it’s telling me the Yellow “does not have enough ink to ensure printer health.” Did you catch that? I can’t print a document in BLACK because it’s out of YELLOW. And can we talk about the ridiculous prices of these replacement cartridges? I fortunately don’t use my printer a ton so it’s not breaking the bank, but what a scam.

No, none of that brings HP even remotely close to being the world’s worst company. What brings them to the brink of absolute, unforgivable horribleness is this: expiring ink cartridges. EXPIRING INK CARTRIDGES? Are you kidding me? What. The. Fuck. Are we making ink cartridges out of bananas now?

These guys are essentially pumping petroleum out of the ground, shipping it across the world, making millions of little printer cartridges in a factory, shipping them to America and all over the country, where they are then sold, installed in printers, used a bit and then thrown away BEFORE THEY’VE EVEN BEEN FULLY USED so these fuckers can squeeze a little bit more profit out of their replenishment-based business model.

When I bought this printer several years ago, I did my best to seek out a printer that was mainstream enough that I could find an ink cartridge when I needed one and that didn’t require the most expensive cartridge replacement. I’m well aware the “money is in the blades” as they say, so I was as careful to not be suckered into buying a cheap printer or anything off-brand that would leave me hunting all over town for overpriced ink when I needed it. I settled on the HP C7280, which also included the scanner I badly needed as well as a few other features I knew I’d never need such as photo printing. It prints serviceable documents when it works, and if you can fight through the shitty software, it’s tolerable most days. Since I print quite infrequently, it’s hasn’t been the end of the world. But when I need to print, I need to print NOW.

But this expiring ink cartridge bullshit may be the thing that finally makes me go Office Space on it. See, in recent years they figured out how to embed a computer chip in the actual cartridge. Not only does it let the printer reject any non-HP cartridges, they’ve also put an “expiration” function in the cartridge, clearly aimed at preventing refilling. So now I’m stuck buying overpriced HP cartridges, even though I haven’t yet used up the ink that I PAID FOR WITH MY OWN MONEY.

I’m not sure when I’ll swap this printer out for something else, but when I do, I know it won’t have the letters “HP” on the front.

EDIT: I tried to hang in there with the old HP printer for quite awhile just to avoid shelling out the bucks for a new printer, but after again refusing to print black because it was out of blue ink, I screamed “FUCK!”, unplugged the piece of crap and set it aside. Here’s what I bought: 

So far it’s been excellent. It prints super fast. Starts up instantly without the half hour of clicking around like the HP garbage. I was a little worried because the ink cartridges look very small but it seems to barely sip ink. It’s been a few months and I’m still on the original ones. The scanning is very fast and the whole device is very quiet. It may have the same chipped ink cartridges as the HP since the industry seems to be heading that way, but we’ll see. I may post a full review once I’ve gone through my first batch of ink. If I do write up a full review, I’ll link to it here. 

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