Complaint Review: HP Hewlitt Packard -

 First, I have no idea on what planet inkjet printing can be done for 2 cents a page. Black and white costs about 5 cents a page if you buy a high capacity printer and high capacity cartridges. Even then, some color ink is used to print black and white so you have to factor that in. Maybe with really cheap third party cartridges you could get to that, but printer makers have gotten pretty good at locking out their printers and third party carts are terrible quality so you end up throwing half of them away. And I have no idea how you could enroll in Instant Ink without putting in your name, address, credit card info, etc. It is definitely not required to use the printer. If you had bothered reading what the program is before you enrolled in it, things would have made a lot more sense. The starter cartridges that come with the printer can be enrolled in Instant Ink, in which case you need a subscription to use them. They can be used normally if you don't enroll in the program. They do give you a free trial to compensate you for the value of the cartridges. Once the trial is over you either have to start paying for a subscription or buy a set of regular cartridges. The instant ink option is usually the same or cheaper than buying cartridges, especially if you are a light user. HPs information about the program explains pretty clearly that you do NOT own the cartridges that are provided as part of the program. It's a subscription. You pay for the pages you need, they make sure you have ink. Finally, if you only need to print black and white you should have bought a laser printer. That can actually get you to 2 cents a page. And toner lasts for many years without going bad.

Thanks for your reply, but a couple points are in error.  The price of new cartridges  at our local store was far exceeded the cost  of a new printer!  In fact a friend told me that he never buys ink, just throws away the 'old' (meaning empty) printer and buys a new one for that very reason.  Now there's a great "green" solution!  

We tried refilling the cartridges that came with the printer with HP brand ink, but it would not accept them, said we had to enroll in the Instant Ink program. 

I paid for a printer, I paid for the ink, I paid for the paper.  Please explain how this is a subsctiprion service. Some months we did not print anything, but nothing ever carried over, we were charged the same and charged 10 cents per copy if we exceeded the limit.

BTW, 95% of our prints are B&W, not color.  But even when my son used to print tons of prints of his favorite stars on our previous HP printer, the cost was only about 2 cents.

I paid for the cartridges -- including a couple that the printer rejected as expired.  Why can I not use my own printer that I bought until the ink is gone?

BTW, the box and set up materials never mentioned that this was a "subscription" program.

If you are happy, God bless you!  But I am entitled to my opinion and freedom to express the same.

I don't know what it is about that program that makes it so hard for some people to understand.

First, nobody forced you to subscribe to the Instant Ink program.  You can just buy regular cartridges at the store and use them the same way you always have.  You can also buy refilled cartridges if you are happy with the typically garbage quality. 

Second, it's a subscription service.  You pay per-page instead of per cartridge.  If you ask me, that's a pretty good deal.  Cartridges dry out and expire even if you don't print anything.  Instant Ink is a way to pay for only the pages you actually use without having to deal with crap-quality third-party cartridges.  The pricing seems more than reasonable.  You would almost certainly pay far more per-page if you bought cartridges the traditional way.  Color printing costs about 10 cents a page with any printer.  If you want cheaper than that, buy a black-and-white laser printer.

Finally, you didn't buy the Instant Ink cartridges, so yes, they get disabled when you cancel the program.  That's how subscriptions work.  If you have an active subscription and they sent you bad cartridges, I'm sure tech support could help with that.

Where is the ripoff?