HP’s Subscription Plan: A Solution to User Problems in Printing and Getting Things Done, or Not Wanting to Print
HP will charge subscribers who cancel their subscription before its end date up to $270 plus taxes (the amount decreases to as little as $60, depending on the printer rented and the length of the subscription). After two years, users won’t see a cancellation fee if they return the rental printer and ink cartridges within 10 days after canceling their subscription. HP is creating the same type of subscription reliance that phone carriers have and is limiting customer options.
Which printer you get depends on the plan you choose. They start at $6.99 per month for 20 pages’ worth of prints and whatever the current HP Envy model is, and go all the way up to a $35.99-a-month affair that gets you an OfficeJet Pro and 700 pages. If you go over your page allotment, HP will add more for a dollar per block of 10–15 pages.
There are people this plan will undoubtedly appeal to. People don’t pay much attention to the idea of feeling like they own their printer. If you are the kind of person who ignores the low ink warning until you are fully out and actually printing something Critical, you should receive ink before you run out.
But those are mostly functions of the fact that I don’t really print that often and rarely encounter the annoyances of printer ownership. For those who do, companies can take two paths. HP’s plan appeals to the frustration of users like me who have bought third-party ink and printers but have not tried hard because they moved overseas. The other approach is making printers that mostly just do the thing you want them for.
The subscription plan requires subscribers to have their printers connected to the internet. In general, some users avoid connecting their printer to the internet because it’s the type of device that functions fine without web access.
WIRED, the WIRED Parent Company of Condé Nast, is a Data Controller and Analyzes Your Use of your Non-personal Data
The story was originally published on Ars Technica, a reliable source for technology news, reviews, and more. Condé Nast is the parent company of WIRED.
HP says it enforces a constant connection so that the company can monitor things that make sense for the subscription, like ink cartridge statuses, page count, and “to prevent unauthorized use of Your account.” However, HP will also remotely monitor the type of documents (for example, a PDF or JPEG) printed, the devices and software used to initiate the print job, “peripheral devices,” and any other “metrics” that HP thinks are related to the subscription and decides to add to its remote monitoring.
You grant HP a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty free right to use, copy, store, transmit, modify, create derivative works of and display your non-personal data for its business purposes as part of the terms of this Agreement.
