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HP Printers Have A Pre-Programmed Failure Date For Non-HP Ink Cartridges (myce.com)
An anonymous reader quotes some harsh allegations from Myce.com:
Thousands of HP printers around the world started to show error messages on the same day, the 13th of September... HP printers with non-HP cartridges started to show the error message, "One or more cartridges appear to be damaged. Remove them and replace them with new cartridges"... When [Dutch online retailer 123ink] emailed their customers asking them if they wanted to check if their printer also had issues, they received replies from more than 1,000 customers confirming the issue...
Consumers who complained to HP were told the error was caused by using non-HP cartridges. A day later HP withdrew that statement and explained the issues were a side effect of a firmware update, [but] printers without any internet access started to reject non-HP cartridges. Therefore it's very unlikely that a firmware update caused the issues and the only other logical explanation is that HP programmed a date in its firmware on which non-HP cartridges would no longer be accepted.
"Printer worked fine for nine months," complains one of many angry users on HP's web site. "Then on 9/13 HP uploaded without my permission a firmware update that caused a message 'damaged cartridge' for all my cartridges and then it refused to print."
Consumers who complained to HP were told the error was caused by using non-HP cartridges. A day later HP withdrew that statement and explained the issues were a side effect of a firmware update, [but] printers without any internet access started to reject non-HP cartridges. Therefore it's very unlikely that a firmware update caused the issues and the only other logical explanation is that HP programmed a date in its firmware on which non-HP cartridges would no longer be accepted.
"Printer worked fine for nine months," complains one of many angry users on HP's web site. "Then on 9/13 HP uploaded without my permission a firmware update that caused a message 'damaged cartridge' for all my cartridges and then it refused to print."
Is there a printer vendor that doesn't play games with the consumables?
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Epson makes an EcoTank printer which supposedly just has a "tank" of ink that you refill *gasp* from a bottle. They charge you more for the printer because they're not recouping costs by jacking you on ink, but once you buy it you can put in whatever ink you want.
If you know printers, HP printers have the nozzles in the ink carts. Nozzles are the primary factor that determines DPI. This means that the Officejet's driver or firmware nerfed it to a lower DPI for no reason other than that it was a lower cost printer.
This was when I stopped buying or recommending HP..
When it comes to 3rd party ink, I can understand a manufacturer that has a separate print head being sensitive to the quality and source of ink. However HP printers have the nozzles/head in the ink cartridge. The nozzles are also extremely low voltage, so the chance of damage to the printer from 3rd party ink is very low. As we all know this is a money grab, as the consumables are where the money is in printing. Margins on the hardware have been driven to nothing or less.
Silence is a state of mime.
The driver running on the PC surely tells the printer the date.
I gave up on inkjet printers last century
You know the routine, check the license. Chances are you signed over the house.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Not only this, your printer is like spyware on your network, punching through your firewall if you allow it.
I bought a new HP office-quality printer from Sam's Club. When the ink ran out, I replaced it with used cartridges from Rapid Refill. The printer recognizes that non-HP ink has been installed, and refuses to print. If I replace the new cartridges with the almost-empty HP cartridges, it prints fine. I Googled the problem, and found that a "fix" is to open and close the ink access door. Every time I print a document, I have to open and close the ink access door. Even if I'm standing at the printer to copy or fax a document, I have to open and close the ink access door before it will process the request.
Last week, I ordered refillable ink cartridges from an Internet store. When those cartridges are installed, the printer refuses to print at all, even with the ink access door trick. It complains that the ink cartridges are "empty or missing."
HP now puts a small computer chip on every ink cartridge. That chip allows the printer to recognize non-HP ink cartridges.
This behavior is as unscrupulous as blackmail. "You must buy our overly-priced ink, or we will brick your $170 printer!"
HP's response was to send me a free ink cartridge. That satisfied the BBB, and they closed the case.
I haven't bought another HP product since, and encourage others to do the same.
I will never tire of telling this story until the day I die, or the neo-millennials go "huh" when you mention BSODs or 404s.
Back around 2003 (the last time I volunteered to "help" somebody with their Windows system), I was recruited by my sister to help a friend of hers install a printer driver for her new HP printer.
I thought, "surely this won't be too hard".
So I went to the right website, downloaded the correct driver, and clicked "install". Whirr, whirr. Time to reboot. Oh, shit, BSOD! Reboot again. BSOD.
"Oh well, I guess I'll have to uninstall that POS printer driver."
Boot into safe mode. No problem. Click on HP-provided utility to uninstall broken driver. Dialogue box comes up: "uninstaller can not run in low resolution". Program terminated. I forget the resolution required, but it wasn't available in safe mode. Piss around with the video mode in safe mode for fifteen minutes. No dice.
Start reading the internet about how to manually uninstall broken HP printer driver. God knows what files I deleted or what scary reg-edits were required, but I eventually got rid of the damn thing. Computer now boots normally again, but the printer still doesn't work.
I go to the HP support page to file a bug report, through an HP supplied URL. Many, many, many required fields. Gave them a piece of my mind in the comment box. Click submit. Result comes back: "404 not found". This is HP's own support website, as found in ancillary tools packed with the broken driver. It found the form for me to fill out, but couldn't find the server after I finished filling it out. Submission lost.
HP forever since has resided in my colossal fuck-up bucket. I know people who purchase their expensive HA kit and swear by the organization, but on the consumer side, I can only swear at this organization.
Despite this, I did buy a networked wide-body inkjet from HP subsequently at a huge discount from a going-out-of-business sale, and it hasn't been terrible, but I only replace the ink when I know I'm doing a lot of printing for a few months.
I don't know any company that's fallen further or faster in consumer esteem (once upon a time, a time I still recall, HP calculators represented the pinnacle of consumer esteem) except perhaps for the Hudson's Bay Company, but to comprehend that story you have to know what it once owned: a list of assets many nation states would envy. They spun off oil companies, railroads, real estate. What did they keep? Zellers.
I keep telling my wife that the insurance business has the rare business model of litigating its own customers (just try to collect ...)
But just now I realize that the ink jet market is not so far behind as all that.
OK, but you don't think that keeping 999 spare printers in storage under your desk is a bit extreme?
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
This kind of bullshit from HP that caused us to move to Dell Printers 5 years ago. We started having service issues with HP where they would refuse to service the printer in warranty, then we started having issues like this were our non-HP ink would fail to work no matter what we did. We have never had any issues with Dell plus they will bend over backwards to fix issues as needed. We have never looked back. On a side note: we have discovered over the last few years that HP computers and laptops are also having issues, break faster than normal, or just don't work well. We are slowly switching to Dell computers and have had no issues. We are beginning to think HP is having some major issues with their company. -WS
It always seem to be that the most frustrating and/or ridiculous computer stories have something to do with printers.
One personal experience I will never forget had to do with a Canon multifunctional I purchased. It was a printer/flatbed scanner and was pretty good at both. But one day it simply stopped reading the cartridge. It gave a message that I needed to insert a cartridge even though one was in there. Replaced it with a new cartridge just in case but still wouldn't recognize it.
I thought to myself "well, the scanner still works very well and it's really fast so at least I can use it as a scanner, right?"
Wrong. The printer would remain in 'flashing light error' mode and would not allow me to dismiss it in anyway whatsoever, preventing me from ever using it as a scanner. Seemed like a waste of a perfectly good scanner.
I'm not defending HP on this one, but it's common knowledge that you get what you pay for when it comes to consumer hardware. When it comes to PCs and printers, you really have to step up into the business lines to get something that has a chance of lasting, or doesn't have artificial restrictions like this put in place.
I've seen HP printers at Best Buy, Costco, etc. for less than $100 in some cases, and certainly the majority are less than $300. At that price point, when you consider how much it costs to market, stock and sell that device, wouldn't you expect tricks like this? Same thing goes for PCs and laptops -- business laptops can still be over $1000 these days, and consumer ones are below $500. But, one comes with a 3 year warranty and a guarantee of a stable hardware configuration, and the other comes with a 90 day warranty and is assembled from the spare parts bin with whatever components they happen to have on hand that day. And it's not just HP -- all the PC manufacturers have a consolidated set of business-level SKUs, plus hundreds of consumer SKUs, all slightly different, to be sold at various levels of retailer (office supply stores, Costco, electronics chains, etc.) In the printer world, you need to buy at least the low end business models to have a chance of them lasting more than a few years. I bought a LaserJet P3015 years back and haven't had any complaints...but the printer retailed for about $900. Buying the office model for home is expensive but it does just work and still has echoes of the old tank-like build quality of LaserJets of yesteryear.
HP, Lenovo, etc. should all just jettison the crap consumer lines, cede the low end of the market to tablets or Chromebooks, and focus on making high-margin quality hardware for people who still need it. Their bottom lines would be much better off, and people wouldn't have to put up with stuff like this.
It isn't that HP are bad printers here, it's that HP are trying to deceive their users into thinking the OEM cartridges are defective. And the timing reveals that its a trick in their software not a true fault.
i.e. pre planned attempt to deceive consumers about the quality of third party cartridges.
At this point the cartridge makers should sue (tortuous interference in business), and the authorities should look at this in terms of the Dieselgate scandal, since its an attempt to deceive consumers.
Once you know that "PC" stands for "Paper Cartridge", it becomes clear that the printer is asking you to put Letter size paper into the paper cartridge.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
He probably did it based on his experience of the failure rate of the HPs.
Windows is a bonfire, Linux is the sun. Linux only looks smaller if you lack perspective.
I have a five year old MFC-9970CDW (SOHO) laser printer that has thrown an error message saying that the life of the drum unit has been used up for the past three years. Now it says that the paper drive unit has exceeded it's life and needs to be replaced. The printer continues to work perfectly.
Along with this, I've found that when you get a warning saying that a toner cartridge is low and needs to be replaced immediately, it has about 20% of it's life left. It took me a very expensive cartridge or two to figure out that I could run them to the end without any issues.
It is an excellent printer, probably the best one I've ever owned and I would recommend Brother laser printers and buy another one over competing brands.
But, I don't consider them to provide them to be a vendor that doesn't play games.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Once you know that "PC" stands for "Paper Cartridge", it becomes clear that the printer is asking you to put Letter size paper into the paper cartridge.
Once you have seen the movie Office Space, it becomes clear that this joke just went over your head.
It's a line from Office Space.
Back around 2003 i did work for a transportation company which was extremely cheap in their approach to IT.
They need a new Printer for printing connotes - so i just got them a 2nd hand HP LaserJet 4 from the late 90's (it cost $30 to buy).
this printer would print approx 3-400 pages per day (well above its duty cycle), would never have an issue, and wouldn't even need to be serviced. (they ended up getting it services once every 12 months just to be on the safe side).
In 2005 the same company needed a new Printer for their Customer Service area, and after the success with the LaserJet 4, decided to lash out, and buy a brand new high-end HP Laser (with networking, duplex, additional paper trays), and cost them approx $3500 - and it was printing alot less than the LaserJet 4, but its duty cycle was well above what they actually needed for it.
This Printer ended up being replaced 5 times in 2yrs by HP, and every 3 months was having to be serviced (due to continually breaking down).
The company then ended up buying a 2nd hand cheap Lexmark to run next to the HP (due to all the downtime with the HP), and then ended up throwing out the HP while it was still under warranty - as the constant replacing of printers, and constant servicing for it, just wasn't worth it.
Anyway, jump forward to 2013, and i stopped dealing with the company... but at this time, the LaserJet 4 was still running fine, while every other printer in the company was now non-HP after having been replaced gradually, due to the costs involved of 'trying' to use HP equipment.
HP made great equipment back in the 1990's... but since the early 2000's everything turned to crap (including their Server's).
An organisation causes an otherwise safely operating piece of machinery to stop operating by means of a sent message. Does that not constitute criminal damage? A few thousand convictions in courts around the world will probably do wonders for their behaviour in future. However it requires someone with imagination to bring the charge!
Blame Carly Fiorina.
I use a non-EcoTank Epson, but I have added on a 3rd party Continuous Ink System. It consists of four ink tanks outside of the printer (which you refill with 3rd party ink, cheap), with surgical tubing running to fake ink tanks inside the printer. The fake ink tanks have a little chip with a sneaky-beaky reset button on it, which scrambles the serial number of the ink tanks. This works so well, and is so cheap that I don't take into account ink costs anymore. Cheaper than my laser per page, but I can print out art and sell it.
The very popular HP m451 is a Color Laser with a very attractive price, but the cartridges (e.g. the black CE410X) is priced at HP at $103.99 each. I was replacing that, and the three color cartridges about every six months. But, I got suspicious. So, when the messages started showing up on my computer about the toner being low, I decided to ignore them. Then the printer started demanding I press the "OK" button to print because, it claimed, the "Black cartridge is Very Low." After I punched the button, the next message suggests that print quality will be poor, and "could become gray."
However, I have now printed more than a ream and a half (about 750 pages) with not a single flaw in the quality of black printing without changing the cartridge (yet). It is clearly a scam.
I think there's a specific intent to delude customers into buying excessively-priced cartridges LONG before they're empty, as a means to increase HP's supplies income at the expense of customers. By charging excessive prices, and rigging their printer software to emit scary messages long before the toner is exhausted, HP is reaping huge income increases. Messrs. Hewlett and Packard are spinning in their graves, because the company has now sunk so low as to scam their customers with specifically designed software to encourage them to throw away still usable toner cartridges.
If others can share similar stories, this seems ripe for a class-action lawyer to file a legitimate case of fraud against HP for designing the software to try to scare people into buying over-priced cartridges when the existing cartridge is far from empty.