Unpopular opinion:
I have a relatively new HP printer with an ‘ink subscription’, and I’m pretty satisfied with it.
We got it during lockdown for home schooling, apart from those first couple of months we print very low volumes. When we do print it tends to be in bursts of a dozen pages or so. I *could *buy my own cartridges, but as others have said, with low usage they can often dry out long before they’re empty. The subscription carts are bigger and seem to be better made (since they’re intended to be returned and refilled) and if one does dry up, I can just send it back early and it’s HP’s problem (also if i need a half dozen cleaning pages because its been long enough it starts to dry up, those aren’t counted against the subscription).
It costs me £1 a month and that gets me 15 pages. We rarely exceed that, but if something came up where I did need more, I’ve another 45 rolled over pages banked. I’m sure there’s a point where it would no longer make financial sense, but right now its just convenient.
Including the cost of the printer itself, it’s cost about £70 over three years.
I’m glad it works for you. My beef is two-fold. First, I am sick of being pushed to subscriptions. There are a lot of things I used to buy once that I now get to buy every month. For some things it works well, but mostly just more trouble and money over the lifetime.
Second, and this is the big one, is intentionally making the product worse to push me to the subscription model. When I buy a printer there is no reason it has to phone home. It is a printer. I should be able to give it power and print with it.
I’m with you, people who buy subscriptions are telling companies “This method of rinsing consumers for every penny works, keep doing it” and make the world worse
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Unpopular opinion: I have a relatively new HP printer with an ‘ink subscription’, and I’m pretty satisfied with it. We got it during lockdown for home schooling, apart from those first couple of months we print very low volumes. When we do print it tends to be in bursts of a dozen pages or so. I *could *buy my own cartridges, but as others have said, with low usage they can often dry out long before they’re empty. The subscription carts are bigger and seem to be better made (since they’re intended to be returned and refilled) and if one does dry up, I can just send it back early and it’s HP’s problem (also if i need a half dozen cleaning pages because its been long enough it starts to dry up, those aren’t counted against the subscription).
It costs me £1 a month and that gets me 15 pages. We rarely exceed that, but if something came up where I did need more, I’ve another 45 rolled over pages banked. I’m sure there’s a point where it would no longer make financial sense, but right now its just convenient. Including the cost of the printer itself, it’s cost about £70 over three years.
I’m glad it works for you. My beef is two-fold. First, I am sick of being pushed to subscriptions. There are a lot of things I used to buy once that I now get to buy every month. For some things it works well, but mostly just more trouble and money over the lifetime.
Second, and this is the big one, is intentionally making the product worse to push me to the subscription model. When I buy a printer there is no reason it has to phone home. It is a printer. I should be able to give it power and print with it.
I’m with you, people who buy subscriptions are telling companies “This method of rinsing consumers for every penny works, keep doing it” and make the world worse
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