HP done ripped me off again: Bought a 2-Pack of Ink Cartridges. One worked, SW Update, Second Old

[TheBlackAdder]

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I bought a 2-pack of black inkjet printer cartridges for around $60. I put one in and printed with it. There was a software update to the printer. Then, I needed to replace the black cartridge today and it will not function. A warning box appears saying that the replacement cartridge is 'obsolete.' Luckily, I purchased a combo back a month ago for when the colors go out and that black cartridge works. But I just ate a new and unused cartridge.

This printer allows me to run the cartridges dry. That is a feature you do want with HP printers, and I'll explain lower down.


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Their laser printers are even more of a rip off as they also go by click charge and estimate when your cartridges are dry. Even if you print one dot, and yellow is always used to print tracking numbers on your printouts, that counts as a click charge. It also counts as a drum click charge for each color used, so you burn out your drums faster. That is why B&W documents should be printed 'Black Ink Only'. It's so bad that on-line sellers are selling replacement chips to replace the ones on the cartridges so you can continue to use them.

The funny thing is, regular printer users face this issue. If you subscribe to an HP maintenance or cartridge plan, they remove that software setting so you can print them until they are dry so HP doesn't have to replace them as often (since it's on their dime).

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[PJMcK]

1. I've used HP printers for decades

I've thought they were great. I've printed literally 10s of thousands of pages with my laser printers and they have never given me any problems. I have three old laser printers (2 were bought in 1994!) and they work seamlessly with my laptops.

However, during the pandemic, I needed to buy a scanner so I bought an HP all-in-one device: color ink-jet printer, copier, scanner and fa !). It can connect either wirelessly or with a USB cable. But it must use the HP software for all of its functions, that is, I can't control it from my applications software. This gives me many problems and impacts my productivity.

So much for progress. These corporations want to control more and more of our work!

[Casady1]

2. Not sure of this applies to you

but HP has an online service where they send you cartridges before you run out. It costs me around $48.00 per year and I never run out of ink. It is a good deal .It does do laser printers. google hp instant ink.

[TheBlackAdder]

3. Thanks. I was holding off buying into subscription services, but it might be what I do next.

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The problem is that I purchased an HP Office Jet 7720 Wide printer from the HP store two years ago. Last year, I started to get notices that they were going to mark the printer unsupported in a year and to plan on buying another one. This is a brand new printer with about 4 reams of print under its belt, and they deprecated it. When they did the last update deprecating it, that's when they snuck in a software update that for some reason made my older unused cartridge invalid (bought 6 months ago), even though its brother cartridge was actively printing.

I'm a little ticked that my new printer is no longer under support.

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[RipVanWinkle]

4. I switched to a B&W laser printer a few

years ago. The initial cost is a bit more than inkjets, but you save money on the ink. For color printing, I go to online services. I rarely ever need to print anything in color.

I’ll never go back to inkjet printers.