HP's CEO spells it out: You're a 'bad investment' if you don't buy HP supplies

https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2024/01/19/hps_ceo_spells_it_out/

by pjmlp • 3 years ago

38 63 3 years ago

forums.theregister.com

6R1M0R4CL3• 3 years ago

Hp is awful. I bought a printer from them. and according to the docs you have to install an app on your phone, to connect to the printer using wifi and give your printer wifi access. i had to look around the printer to look for an USB hole.. and those morons put a fricking STICKER over the USB so they try to push you into using wifi...

ripped that sticker away and using the printer using USB only.

then, the various software they try to push they try VERY hard to get you into instant-ink. if you do accept, your printer is then firmware-flashed to check and look for HP genuine cartridges. in order to avoid lawsuits in Europe, by default the printer DOES NOT check for those. they do IF you accept the instant-ink contract, which contains a clause inside where YOU accept, as the customer, to see your rights reduced by the firmware of the printer to be modified so it will no longer accept all cartridges, but only HP ones with a chip for authentication....

HP. there's a place in HELL just for you.

nicbou• 3 years ago

I'm an even worse investment; I don't buy HP products and will tell anyone who asks to avoid them. This has been true for over a decade.

Unfortunately, their MBA probably never told them to measure the cost of a bad reputation.

lancesells• 3 years ago

Their CEO Enrique Lores looks to have made around $20M a year since 2019, not counting 2020 where he only made $6M.

At ~$66M he probably doesn't need to care about long-term reputation.

II2II• 3 years ago

If that sentiment is common, perhaps HP should be dropping out of the consumer printer market.

(I'm in the same boat: I've heard so much about their anti-consumer practices with printers over the years, I wouldn't even consider other products even if those practices didn't carry over.)

japes982• 3 years ago

I bought a HP laser printer a year or so ago. Great printer, love it except that toner just started running out and replacement toner literally costs nearly as much as the printer.

I was expecting to pay a premium for toner, but not a "might as well throw the printer out and get a new one" premium.

solardev• 3 years ago

Get a Brother for your next one

starbugs• 3 years ago

In the early days, I made the bad decision to buy an HP laptop. Must have been around 2001 or something. Worst laptop I ever owned.

After that, I never bought anything HP again. Said laptop went into the bin a year after I bought it because it wouldn't stop bluescreening.

I have a Brother laser printer and I am reasonably happy with that (as happy as you can be with a printer, I guess).

bryanlarsen• 3 years ago

New printers usually come with "starter size" cartridges, so you generally get a lot more ink/toner buying replacement cartridges than buying a new printer.3

teeray• 3 years ago

Even when "low toner" comes up, ignore it. I've been ignoring mine for the past year and it still prints. I think if I printed higher volume, it might run out quicker, but so far so good.

gnicholas4• 3 years ago

I went several months on "low toner" before it actually ran out. I almost always print on 'draft' setting, which makes it last longer in general.

gareth_untether• 3 years ago

Buy ink bottles and needles and inject your cartridges.

abcd_f• 3 years ago

For a laser printer?

bell-cot• 3 years ago

I bought a HP laser printer [...] toner [...]

Laser != Inkjet && Toner != Ink

beretguy• 3 years ago

Never buy anything HP.

DrNosferatu• 3 years ago

That’s what I call a great job growing public sympathy for your brand!

This CEO totally deserves their hard-earned bonus.

marcus0x62• 3 years ago

HPQ has trailed the S&P 500 over the last 5 years, so I guess their CEO would know how to recognize a bad investment.

debian33• 3 years ago

I’m still using a laserjet 4200. Reliable, cartridge last for 10000+ pages. Quality is good, do double side, select the good paper format automatically, easy to repair and parts are easy to find. I even got 5 free cartridges from someone who was throwing them away. I have more ink than I could ever use. You can find those printer for around $100. Not sure why they are not more popular.

dano• 3 years ago

USB port only? No Ethernet?

a_subsystem• 3 years ago

Hook it to a $35 raspberry pi and install CUPS. Become an typical AirPrint enjoyer. I'm using an ancient parallel port printer hooked to my primary file server.

https://www.linuxbabe.com/ubuntu/set-up-cups-print-server-ub...

nehal3m2• 3 years ago

Looks like parallel, you can adapt that to Ethernet with an HP JetDirect 170X:

https://www.alles4pc.de/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/12543_Pro...

debian33• 3 years ago

There is ethernet. Mine died few years ago after an electric outage, I just when on ebay and bought a new card for $15.

duped• 3 years ago

I think printers are a bad investment for a consumer electronics manufacturer if you feel the need to squeeze your customers instead of improving your product.

j4yav• 3 years ago

Maybe they should try selling premium quality such that they don't need to live off ink subscriptions.

beanjuiceII• 3 years ago

HP is a bad investment.

happytiger• 3 years ago

This belief knocked HP out of several companies I have been involved with for far more than printer ink.

There are a lot of hearts and minds who used to love the company that now actively recommend against them — in no small part because of the printer ink thing.

They should be more worried about their reputation than their printer profits.

consumer451• 3 years ago

I have not had to buy a printer for a long time, but last I did research on the matter it was Brother all the way.

javchz• 3 years ago

Yes, as much as I love other HP products, their printers can be expensive and painful(at least in my experience). As weird as it sounds, feels cheaper and easier to 3D print, than handle paper with cartridge Inkjets.

Recently went for a brother toner based printer, and even if the quality it's lower if you look for details, feels so nice to have a device that "just works". Besides the toner and drums are multiple times cheaper.

404mm• 3 years ago

Until Brother support tells you your new printer was not purchased from their authorized dealer and despite it being faulty from factory, the warranty is void.

To be clear, I’m not defending HP (I avoid them myself too). I just want to raise more awareness that Brother is not great option either. They are just much less shitty than HP.

TechRemarker• 3 years ago

If they are selling a product cheaply with expectation to make up the difference in long term addons that of course it’s a bad investment if people get the product cheaper and do the long term addons elsewhere. Nice to hear a company admitting the obvious for a change. Preventing people from using alternatives rather than making their own product worth it, means potentially HP is a bad investment for customers.

rgbrenner• 3 years ago

Consumer printers are a dying market, in case you havent noticed. Sales are trending down roughly 25% over the past decade. HP itself has seen its printer revenue drop from $29B in 2008 to $18B last year. Unit sales have seen a similar decline.

This is what desperation looks like. Nothing they can do will reverse the trend--its bigger than a single company. HP has its numbers to hit.. but are completely powerless to make it grow. So they do things like this, trying to slow the decline for themselves personally... but push more consumers away, accelerating the trend and the decline of their business.

I think the model is starting to show its cracks.. the old model was: buy a printer at a discount, pay us for ink. But if consumers are printing less, they're buying less ink, making it even harder to get back that printer discount. So HP needs to squeeze all of the ink sales out of the consumer they can... maybe if they can push out 3rd party ink, they can delay changing the business model for a little bit longer. But thats going to get harder every single year (if its even realistic).

I've owned lots of printers over the years, including a few HPs... I currently own 0 printers. And dealing with stuff like this is a small part why, but the bigger reason is: dont need a printer.

crazygringo• 3 years ago

dont need a printer.

As far as I can tell, printing return shipping labels is the main reason to own a printer these days.

And even those often aren't needed, as UPS will sometimes scan a QR and print the label themselves. Or dropping off Amazon at Whole Foods.

But frequently enough there's no way around it. And if you don't go to an office frequently enough to use that printer, and buy things online (especially clothing) -- you still need one at home.

stetrain• 3 years ago

And a basic black and white laser printer will handle that task just fine. Mine is 5 years old and I'm still on the original toner cartridge.

delichon• 3 years ago

I've got a Brother black & white laser printer that is mostly a UPS label printer. But a couple of years ago bought big Canon color printer. Since then my blank walls have filled up with my favorite art, photos, people and things. I like that having the printer makes me continually on the lookout for things I want to print. I can value and memorialize things that would have been just a passing thought.

johannes1234321• 3 years ago

I solve that by going down to the drugstore round the corner where I can print the few things I need printed.

Of course this won't work for everybody, but so much less trouble for me than any printer I haf before.

dukeyukey• 3 years ago

About 90% of my printer usage in the last year has been D&D character sheets and rule summaries.

magnusmundus• 3 years ago

There are still other reasons to print stuff, and still preferably at home often enough. Hobbies (sheet music, game material), German bureaucracy, workflow preferences. However these companies made it completely impractical to own an inkjet printer which you might not use for 6 months at a time, and for some reason they aren't milking laser printers as hard.

Though, I'm pretty sure I'd just spring for a thermal printer if they made toner maintenance impractical too, personally speaking.

conductr• 3 years ago

I haven’t owned a printer since early 2000s. The drivers and malware always annoyed me way more than ink prices.

My main print source is occasional business dealings. Just last week I hired a civil engineer for a consult and he sent me a PDF to sign and return. I thought it was archaic, expecting an esign, especially for the small job it was ($1000) but I think he was old school/low tech (even fumbled the Teams meeting invite we had pretty hard) so I just went with it.

This type thing comes up for me 2-8 times a year over the past 20 years. I just use printandgo@fedex.com and make an errand out of it. There’s a few brick and mortar locations near my home and areas I frequent so it’s never too inconvenient. I can sign and scan it back to PDF while there too. Printing alone was never enough for me anyway, so I’d either need to get a print and scan printer or two separate peripherals. Using FedEx costs me about $10-30 a year and just works albeit requires a little logistics on my part.

Freak_NL• 3 years ago

Transport tickets, booking confirmations, (censored) ID copies for accommodations, all stuff I prefer to take with me on paper when travelling (even if just as a backup).

Also printing guidelines/designs/checklists for woodworking/leatherworking/sewing projects, but that's not something most people do.

I can't imagine not having a (laser) printer in the house.

Glyptodon• 3 years ago

I can imagine additional things that'd be nice tac-ons. Like having some kind of printer is useful a few times a year, same with scanner, next obvious thing to add IMO would be a laser cutter that can cut cardstock. There are probably other things that could take advantage of the box with moving head form. So basically I can imagine the all in one merging with a cricut I guess. But yeah, not going to have tons of disposables or grow the market. And there's not really any reason that a printer shouldn't last a decade or more, which means yearly volume ought to be small...

gosub100• 3 years ago

isn't this the perfect startup: "like uber, but for printing" (sorry, I know thats cringe). One person per neighborhood that invests in a decent printer and hand-delivers it to you within the hour? It would probably be too expensive compared to print-via-mail though. It might work for USPS though, if limited to simple b&w prints, just have the postman print it out in the truck and leave it in your mail box with your mail.

singhrac• 3 years ago

Very sad to see where this company has come since Hewlett & Packards “the HP way” years. Read The Big Score recently and was surprised to learn HP was once something different (my entire life they’ve made half-baked products that I could never recommend).

estebarb• 3 years ago

HP should be held responsible of all the eGarbage they produce, by forcing you to buy new cartridges instead of refill them, and having to buy new printers because suddenly it refuses to accept cartridges.

mhb• 3 years ago

157 comments wasn't enough?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39060793

nashashmi2• 3 years ago

Ha! I love your level of snark. It is refreshing. Made my day!

mkoryak• 3 years ago

Not for me, I never wrote any of those and I would like to write at least one more here.

nashashmi2• 3 years ago

Here is the actual quote in full: "Every time a customer buys a printer, it's an investment for us. We are investing in that customer, and if that customer doesn't print enough or doesn't use our supplies, it's a bad investment." - HP CEO

Basically, every printer is a loss leader. And recurring supplies is their way to recoup losses.

I think this is an annoying business model. The world has changed. Culture has changed. This may have been great in the 90s. It does not work anymore. (Remember those internet connection companies that gave free junky computers in exchange for internet contracts?)

AlexandrB• 3 years ago

Has the world changed though? I'm pretty sure all the other consumer printer companies still run off this model. If HP was to break ranks and start charging (effectively) a premium for their printers by selling them for a profit, would consumers actually buy them over the cheaper alternatives that are still subsidized by ink sales? The state of the ad-subsidized LCD TV market suggests that customers either don't know or don't care about what they're trading for lower prices - so I suspect that selling printers at a profit would be a net loss of revenue for HP.

voytec• 3 years ago

Recently discussed and very much relevant: "Brother have gotten to where they are now by not innovating"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38429291

gnicholas4• 3 years ago

I had to replace a toner cartridge in my hp printer for the first time and was shocked by the expense ($110-130). What’s a good and reliable alternative?

bearjaws• 3 years ago

Anything Brother makes. My father has a 10 year old black and white laser printer from them and it hasn't had an issue.

I have the HL-L3280CDW and its been solid.

gnicholas4• 3 years ago

Oh sorry, I meant for getting toner for an HP. Any reliable alternatives?

M95D• 2 years ago

I still have a HP 6P. It's even wireless (infrared port)!

onewheeltom2• 2 years ago

I love InstantInk because I hate printers. Paying for prints not ink puts the onus on HP to make sure everything is working properly (or no subscription $$)

onewheeltom2• 2 years ago

I tolerate my $120 Brother laser and it rarely disappoints

HP's CEO spells it out: You're a 'bad investment' if you don't buy HP supplies

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