HP launched a subscription service today that rents people a printer, allots them a specific amount of printed pages, and sends them ink for a monthly fee. HP is framing its service as a way to simplify printing for families and small businesses, but the deal also comes with monitoring and a years-long commitment.
Prices range from $6.99 per month for a plan that includes an HP Envy printer (the current model is the 6020e) and 20 printed pages. The priciest plan includes an HP OfficeJet Pro rental and 700 printed pages for $35.99 per month.
↫ Scharon Harding at Ars Technica
Can I pay them not to put a printer in my house?
This feels terrible to me. It’s turning printers into a new disposable commodity.
It will generate so much e-waste as every 2 years each as every subscriber will want/get a new printer even if their current one is fine. I do get that printers are already loss leading hardware, but mine has sat there quite happily for pushing 10 years. It still prints as well as ever and it’s only limitation will be it’s WiFi being to old to be supported…
The incentive for HP will be build cheap and don’t make it last.
Adurbe,
Same here. I have an HP laserjet that cost no more than $250 IIRC and it’s still going. Renting for just one year at $432/year is crazy. All these companies trying to “innovate” with subscription models as though they’re the new business fad. But it’s really just a ploy to get consumers replacing hardware on a more regular cycle and pay more.
If they sell you a reliable printer then you won’t buy another one any time soon, so no recurring revenue for them. If they sell you the printer it’s in their interest to make it unreliable and fail quickly so you buy a replacement. It used to be that technology was improving so you were incentivised to buy a new model based on it being better, but new printers arent significantly better than old ones from a user perspective.
On the other hand if you’re on a subscription then they do get a recurring revenue stream, but they’re also on the hook to continue providing the service. If the printer fails, then they need to replace it as part of your subscription. With a subscription model they are actually incentivised to provide a reliable unit.
Perhaps the machines will need to be reliable ( require less servicing ) but they do not need to have longevity. Plastic parts that break after many pages, crappy rubber that crumbles after a few years, or cheap glass that cracks after some number of thermal cycles are all fine as long as the failures are statistically low enough during the subscription period. The real incentive will be in lowering the cost of consumables ( their cost ). My guess is that the overall quality vector will trend downwards. After all, profit margins need to continue to trend upwards and, once everybody is already a subscriber, that means either lower costs or higher prices. Lowering cost scales better and has less impact on demand ( at least in the short term ).
It’s the “planned obsolescence” strategy. We all know it is bad for the planet and bad for our bank accounts, yet the incentives under capitalism are perverse. Corporations that can successfully implement planned obsolescence into their business models are winning out over those that built products that last.
Not for nothing, but engineers working towards the goal of longevity really could work wonders if they were allowed to. We can build products that will last 30 years and are easily repairable for a lifetime. Corporate profits are a huge conflict of interest for engineers though. Furthermore corporations have gotten wise to the legal avenues that consumers have to make themselves whole when the products don’t last…
“Fridge failures: LG says angry owners can’t sue, company points to cardboard box”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2lErtXGAsQ
I hate when companies get away with this.
Leasing printers is already pretty common and honestly more fiscally sensible for most businesses, as that takes care of maintenance too. For consumers, I don’t see how this makes sense for the casual printer over just going to the library or office store.
Exactly this, $7/month for 20 pages is steep. Works out to 35 cents per page assuming you use the full 20 pages. It probably costs less to print something at your local library,
bert64,
Not only are the prices steep, but a subscription doesn’t make much sense for users may need a hundred pages one month and zero pages the next – you’re going to end up overpaying and they know this. The terms and advertising tie-ins mentioned by the article are appalling too IMHO.
I can’t imagine most home users want to take on more regular monthly bills to embrace such garbage. However these companies have both carrots and sticks at their disposal. I hope this doesn’t happen, but they can rope more consumers into subscriptions by intentionally making traditional printer ownership worse for everyone.
I can’t see this working for most domestic / residential printers, but I get that companies leveraging the WFH segment might find it attractive in some way to control / monitor costs.
I’m more worried about the growing trend I see in some companies moving back towards hardcopy. It sounds paranoid, but another associate tells me it may be that it’s paranoid corporate psychopaths who are using hardcopy as a deliberate ploy to get staff back into the office and under scrutiny. I even came across a service company recently that has reverted to NCR forms for it’s field service crew, how can this be in 2024? But alas human bastardry is such I’m not surprised at all by this assertion.
Printer companies have been screwing consumers for decades with far too expensive ink and bullshit printers. It’s time for a company to come out and make a consumer friendly printer to put these big corps out of business.
iluvcrap2000,
I agree that’s what should happen. But in end stage capitalism…that’s not what ends up happening, Instead, we see more competition failing as the markets consolidate around the most powerful incumbents who end up doing whatever they please because they can 🙁
I go to staples when i need to print something… or a fine art specialty place for my photography needs. Cheaper and less ewaste than maintaining consumer grade equipment at home. Your needs may vary.
gagol2,
I read that as “my pornography needs” the first time round, haha.
How much to scan something? Have the Product Managers noticed that this is still free? Missed opportunity.
In business, I have been responsible for these “as-a-Service” models myself so glass houses here but I hate the idea of turning consumer hardware into a monthly fee and yearly upgrade treadmill. Not everything has to go down the same road that mobile phones have gone. In fact, it would be nice to reverse the trend there as well.
As others have said, most consumer use does not even have the appropriate duty cycle for this kind of thing. Home printers go unused for months in many homes I wager but see heavy use at some point. While there can certainly be “pooled use” business models, the instinct of companies is going to price for peak loading which is just a terrible deal for the consumer. If we were to price some of these out as loans and figured out the effective interest, we might be bumping into usury laws. In fact, what a great way to overcome these pesky legal limitations!
We are losing touch somewhat with the very concept of ownership. More and more, we want things that we cannot afford and see “low” subscription pricing as a way in but that causes us to massively overpay and “own” nothing in the end. We act rich and become poor. The lack of value will be masked by an ever shortening of upgrade cycles where we will always have the latest stuff ( and landfills will be full of what we discard ). In my country, the government passed laws to limit 3 year mobile phone contracts to 2 years as an act of supposed consumer protection. The result? Everybody upgrades their phone every 2 years instead of 3 and we are all paying more than ever. Everything we use seems to be going down this same road.
I was going to make a joke about Coffee Maker as-as-Service. Then I realized that Nespresso and Keurig are pretty much that already. Good grief. What is wrong with us?
tanishaj,
There’s nothing you can think of that companies can’t turn into a monthly subscription.
I’d like to see what people come up with, haha.
Capitalism.
Hello Lexmark, Brother, or any competition that’s Linux supported!
Just buy a laser printer.
Yes, upfront costs are more. But unless you are printing speciality paper, CD-ROMS, t-shirt transfer, photos, or similar other things that cannot tolerate the high heat, inkject it very expensive on the long run.
And, if you really need an inkject, get a “tank” printer:
https://www.staples.com/deals/supertank-printers/BI2118153
(If you don’t need a tank, you probably don’t need an inkjet either. And sorry for the rant)
Does is also come with cameras and microphones, so it can report everything you do to the police and Google?
Or would that be Facebook and TikTok integration?
Flatland_Spider,
…
I wonder what HP has in mind here. Is it just the fact that someone has a printer, or are they getting into more snooping around the OS like microsoft does? Frankly I don’t like the idea of selling any of my data to data bidders like google.
Hopefully this is done as an opt-in, but I doubt it will be. Too often it’s an opt out that few customers even know about. Many banks and credit cards go as far as to reset your opt-out requests hoping that you slip up. How the hell this is even legal is beyond me.
Wow, I’m dumb. They thought of it before I did!
Ads on your printouts! Or the printer prints out ads for you. Pay for the service, and get targeted ads after HP sends everything your printing to Google, Facebook, TikTok, and 7680 exclusive partners.
Now that I think about it, I wonder if part of the reason Google Cloud Printing was axed for liability reasons. I’m sure people were sending all sorts of junk to printers, and Google processing/holding was a source of legal liability.
Flatland_Spider,
“This printout is brought to you by Burger King”
They could do both pre-roll and mid-roll and ads. And of course it would be the SAME ADS repeated over and over again. I shudder the thought.
JFC. We already live in a dystopia. Why do people think vehicular combat over fuel and water in a global eco catastrophe is necessary before calling it what it is?