Instant Ump: HP Inc's subscription ink services hiking prices from next month HP is hiking the UK price of Instant Ink monthly plans by more than 50 per cent in some cases, although the company website is still showing the cost of the soon-to-be out-of-date bands. The subscription service was launched in the UK in 2014, and "eliminates ink anxiety" according to the US vendor, with a small cartridge in …
The reason I went with it is I print so rarely ink cartridges were drying out long before they ran out of ink. To actually use a 3000 page cartridge would probably take me 30 years.
So paying 99 cents a month means I could have bought one cartridge every 40 months, but they will dry out before that (seems to take about two years for that to happen) meaning I'd actually have to pay twice as much buying cartridges.
Granted, I liked it a lot better when the minimum plan was free until a couple years ago, but I knew that would never last given how many people are like me and hardly ever print anything.
I actually use the scanning function of my printer more often than I use it to print anything..
Yeah but while I don't need to print often when I do it is sometimes in color so a B&W only laser wouldn't work for me, and color laser multifunction printers are much more expensive than the $40 I paid for my color inkjet multifunction, even if you tack on $12/year for the (hopefully) decade or so it lasts.
Mine was originally free but then they sent notice they were going to start charging 99 cents. Maybe there was some sort of cutoff where they changed the language at signup that didn't allow them to do that to you? At any rate, $12/year is still cheap. If they raised it to $2.99 or something I'd probably look at alternatives, but I got a couple years of freebies so my average cost is still pretty low!
It is much easier to buy an inkjet than a laser, they are usually smaller as well.
Also (I don't know about the laser printers people have commented on) but the colour printer/scanner/copier function is what most people want.
They are cheap to buy (we all know why) and so are the default option. Laser is considered business and for a colour laser printer, hugely more expensive, particularly if you want the scanner/copier.
To be honest I think we use the scanner and copier more than the printer now.
You can but the the price on the label puts people off.
When there are ink jet printers for under £50 lined up on a shelf and one or two lasers at £250 which one will the average user (not the people reading El Reg) reach for?
Price wins every time. Laser printers are not considered as home use for the average person who will have signed up for Instant Ink. The lower cost of the printer and ink subscription is all about convenience and will win every time.
Up front cost is the only reason, really, for inkjet over a laser. Lasers are also much happier being left for months at a time; with some inkjets basically being scrap if used only occassionally.
Even this isn't that bad now, what with very good colour lasers being available sub £500. Space can be a consideration I suppose; fully portable inkjets are a thing, and have been since the mid 90s. The smallest A4 laser printer is still a hefty lump by comparison.
Times when I want stuff printed now though, either consist of me wanting a professional booklet printing (so forget home printers) or making things for boardgames. When Star Fleet Battles started offering colour PDFs of ship SSD's I was completely sold. Printed-and-laminated those things are way nicer than throwaway paper copies.
You can buy other ink cartidges, as normal. I didn't have many problems with fake HP ink - back when I bought cartridges regularly. But to be fair to HP (gags!) Instant Ink is a bloody good deal. And is so even at this new price. I used to buy 3 sets of cartridges a year, where even the fake ones were about £10 each. So that's £90 a year. We're a low-medium use office, so we're on an inkjet, because we want a little more image quality that we got when we had a laser. Now we've been paying £30-£40 a year for all the ink we need, and getting genuine cartridges without having to think about it too much. What's not to like?
I've been expecting them to put the prices up for some time, given we've been on it for 3-4 years and this is the first time they have. I guess the upside for them is regular direct debits and no danger we'll buy fakes.
Also they screwed up when I signed up. We got loads of credits, that were only supposed to last for 3 months. The idea being that you didn't need to worry if you'd gone for too few pages per month, you had near infinite extra credits. But they forgot to time-limit the credits, so I had 20 months of free ink.
Also the Instant Ink cartridges appear to have much more ink in than the ones you buy.
I had one cartridge that went peculiar shortly after I fitted it so did not have a replacement and a quick WebChat resulted in a new cartridge sent out next day. No issues or anything.
If you read the small print on Instant Ink it specifically says the cartridges are bigger. Which of course makes sense given that they're paying the postage.
Of course they also control that cartridge. If you stop paying, your printer stops working, until you put in cartridges that you've bought yourself.
But for all the criticism I've seen on this thread, I think people are being totally unfair. Instant Ink is cheap, and also has decent customer service, the one time I've had to use it. Admittedly it only exists because customers were so obviously pissed off with the massive rip-off that was buying HP ink, and they're clearly to blame for that.
>Also the Instant Ink cartridges appear to have much more ink in than the ones you buy.
Well given the logistics and the cutting out of the retail costs (typically 30% of the final price) it would make sense for them to standardise on one cartridge size and given ink is really cheap the cost difference between 'standard' and XL cartridges is probably sub 1p.
Reminds me of an article I read about BMW's, the factory fitted Pirelli's were better quality than the after market ones. Hence the after market tryes didn't last as long, to get tyres of an equivalent standard owners had to replace not like-for-like but with a more expensive Pirelli tyre.
A cheap fix for the need for ink is to buy an octopus, stuff it in the ink cart holder, & attach the power leads to it's nipples. You send a print job to the printer, the printer sends a jolt to the octopus, & the little squirmy bugger squirts ink all over the paper.
If you do very little printing then you only need a small octopus, a medium sized one for medium amounts of printing, and a large one for lots of printing; the commercial printing places tend to buy a salt water aquarium & breed their own ink supplies.
I've tried to use squids instead of octopi, but they kept getting their longest tentacles caught in the paper feed rollers.
Once the current octopus runs out of ink, you can hand it off to the cafeteria for adding to the soup!
=-D
(Giant, neon, blinking, scrolling sarcasm tag.)
There's prior art. The Scotts used an octopus, held like a set of bagpipes, to shower themselves in ink to draw on all that frightening stuff that made some folks so afraid. Once the octopi was out of ink, the Scott could then use it as a weapon or as food, often both, and sometimes even in that specific order. =-)p
Yep, one of my customers needs HP 59X toner, HP costs £175 each, compatible £47.
The first printer 'died' (actually they broke it) in 18 months, had used 15 toner in that time, saving £1920.
The replacement printer cost £350 - quids in!!
I find the convenience of having ink shipped to me before I run out at a modest charge worth it.
I used to have access to office printing until a change of job and so this is ideal for me, no more dried out cartridges from any manufacturer.
It also makes me popular with my daughter as she can print what she wants, when she wants.
I get why some people consider it stupid but it’s like any subscription service, nobody forces you to use it.
That is a typical corporate response, in other words absolute rubbish!
Where in the market has there been a 50% increase in anything that the printers use? If this was an inflation rate rise this should be less than 6% but it's not, it's 50% for me and others and it's unfair.
If they believe that response answers our questions well they are wrong, it typical corporate greed.
It's always the poorest in our Communities that gets hit the hardest, no other plan / subscription on Instant Ink has had the 50% increase? It may only be £1 but it's the principal. Be fair, if one plan has the 50% increase they all should have the same.
This does not end here.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
