HP sued for deceiving ink printer users (San Jose Mercury 19.Feb.05)

  • Thread starter Thread starter ThomasH
  • Start date Start date
CWatters said:
Reuters had the story here...
Click to expand...
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsA...550006_RTRIDST_0_TECH-TECH-HP-PRINTERS-DC.XML

Regardless of the merit of this lawsuit, as an HP insider I can tell you
with certainty one should stay at least 10 feet away from _any_ HP
product produced in the last five years. Carly Fiorina was hired to
gut the company, and that's precisely what she did. Their business
model for these five years has been to ride on their former reputation
while producing the absolute cheapest crap that barely lasts as long
as its warranty period, and to cut often necessary corners wherever
and whenever possible. In gutting the company, their reputation has
been gutted as well.

Now that the damage is done, Fiorina has been given the boot (with
a $42 million parachute btw), and HP is now pretending to begin the
process of repairing their reputation. Although I wouldn't look for
any major real changes in the company.
 
Greg said:
Regardless of the merit of this lawsuit, as an HP insider I can tell you
with certainty one should stay at least 10 feet away from _any_ HP
product produced in the last five years.
Click to expand...

I'm rather impressed by the 4650 Color Laserjet. At least so far. And
the Laserjet 1000 seems to be great, too.
 
bob said:
I'm rather impressed by the 4650 Color Laserjet. At least so far. And
the Laserjet 1000 seems to be great, too.
Click to expand...

Did I mention they don't even make their own printers any more?
 
bob commented courteously ...
This is an issue of cartridges that have time stamps
in them and printers that refuse to use them after
they have expired, regardless of ink content.
Click to expand...

That's news to me, thanks.
I read somewhere that HPs stand is the ink might go bad
and they don't want to risk consumers with bad prints
due to expired ink.
Click to expand...

I can see HP's altruism, but can't relate to it. I
sometimes buy cartidges for my HP 1220C when they're on
sale and don't use them for months, maybe a year. That I
know of, there's no date stamp so it isn't an issue.

Now that I'm wise to HP's apparently transparent attempt
to garner revenue by timing out their ink cartridges, I
can only say "stop helping me when I don't want to be
helped!"

If this lawsuit is real, and not specious nor an urban
legend in the making, if it happened to me, I'd take
appropriate direct action, not get involved in a likely
10-year class action litigation.

'Course, not being a tort attorney nor any kind of
attorney, I'd have to ask if any laws were broken, any
license agreements allegedly in place, and some other
relevant questions.

Often times, companies get away with horseshit simply
because they can. Eventually, we'll all be forced into
dealing with this kinda crap, along with all of our
software being copy-protected with activation crap.
 
ThomasH said:
A class action law suit was filed in Santa Clara County superior
court. It alleges that HP's 'smart printer' technology deceives
customers to buy new ink cartridges before the ink has run out.
The software renders cartridge unusable through the use of built-in
expiration date.
Click to expand...

In a similar case against Epson, filed by a Dutch consumer organization
last year, the consumer org was forced to rectify its complaints because
Epson convinced the court that the residual ink in the cartridges was
necessary to keep the nozzle holes free from clogging.

Ton
 
bob said:
The Deskjet and Designjet series inkjet printers will stop when they are
out.
Click to expand...

My deskjet 930c will continue to print with an empty cartridge, as did
my previous dekjet. Print is a bit faint though:-)

Tony M
 
Tony said:
My deskjet 930c will continue to print with an empty cartridge, as did
my previous dekjet. Print is a bit faint though:-)

Tony M
Click to expand...

My bad on the deskjets. I was confusing the behavior for missing
cartridges with empty ones! It's been many years since we actually used
our small fleet of 1200c printers.

The designjet is new to us though, and it does work as I described. I've
taken to weighing the cartridges to determine how much ink is in them.
It works pretty well. Weigh them full and empty, and then you can tell
how much ink each print uses (and thus estimate cost). It makes a lot
more sense when you understand that this is a 36" printer making E sized
prints... It also helps to know if a cartridge is empty or clogged. I
very consistently get 45g of ink out of them.

Bob
 
C said:
If you are talking about trial lawyers, maybe. The lawyers will get paid
millions of dollars. The consumers they are supposedly protecting will get a
coupon for ten bucks off on an HP printer.
Click to expand...
Quite right. The laws on class action suits REALLY need work.
 
Bill said:
Once with an Epson printer I tried an experiment, printing as many
sheets as I could after the "low ink warning", until the photo was
obviously off-color, indicating one of the inks had indeed ran totally
dry. I got another 10 or so photos, IIRC. *But* when I put a new cart
in there was the mother of all air bubbles between the ink in the cart
and the printer head and it took maybe a dozen cleaning cycles and 30
minutes of futzing around to finally get the ink back to the head.
Last time I tried that experiment.

So I think the reason there's still some unused ink is to avoid getting
air pockets in the line. Anyone bothered by this should switch to the
CIS systems. What's important is the cost per sheet, not whether or
not there's some ink left in the tank when the warning light comes on,
I feel.
Click to expand...

Another factor some people forget is that if you print a lot of one of
the colors of ink in a cartridge, it may well run out of one color,
rendering it pretty nearly useless, long before the other colors are
out. I have to remind my wife NOT to keep using yellow backgrounds on
all her greeting cards.
 
Arthur said:
The mechanism in the HP is somewhat different form the otehrs you
mention. Most permanent or semi-permanent inkjet printers leave some
ink in the cartridge when it reads empty to prevent either head damage
(in the case of the Canon, or air locks and head drying out internally
for the Epson.

However, some HP printers have a expiration date programmed into them,
so the printer simply stops when tat date is reached. It is apparently
shown on the box, and I believe HP will exchange cartridges if you have
new ones that are expired. Their claim is that their inks become
unstable in some manner after a certain date and can clog or damage the
printer in some manner.

Art
Click to expand...

This is evidently not true for the carts I use as I often stock up on
them at Sam's Wholesale Club so that I always have a new one on hand. I
have never run into the problem you refer to. Maybe that is because I
use cheap printers.... Grin.
 
bob said:
I'm rather impressed by the 4650 Color Laserjet. At least so far. And
the Laserjet 1000 seems to be great, too.
Click to expand...
I think what we are seeing is a 'disgruntled employee'. I usually take
their ravings for what they cost me to obtain.
 
bob said:
The Deskjet and Designjet series inkjet printers will stop when they are
out. In fact the Designjet 750 will refuse to print if the some of the
nozzels are clogged. It will stop in the middle of a print and tell you
to service the cartridge.




This is an issue of cartridges that have time stamps in them and
printers that refuse to use them after they have expired, regardless of
ink content.

I read somewhere that HPs stand is the ink might go bad and they don't
want to risk consumers with bad prints due to expired ink.

Bob
Click to expand...
It seems, rather obviously, to be a scheme to prevent refilling with non
HP inks. It costs the company a lot of money to handle consumer
complaints traceable to such refills. Not to mention that it cuts into
their profits. Both my printers use HP 56 and 57 carts, and neither has
ever stopped printing when the ink runs out, let alone BEFORE it runs out.
 
Tony said:
My deskjet 930c will continue to print with an empty cartridge, as did
my previous dekjet. Print is a bit faint though:-)

Tony M
Click to expand...
Yes, like some cash register receipts I have seen, right? Grin.
 
Ron Hunter said:
I think what we are seeing is a 'disgruntled employee'. I usually take
their ravings for what they cost me to obtain.
Click to expand...

Actually more disgusted than disgruntled, Ron. If you could
find some possible way of taking your head out of your ass
long enough to ask others (preferably HP employees) you'd
know every word of what I said is true.
 
Greg Coulter said:
Actually more disgusted than disgruntled, Ron. If you could
find some possible way of taking your head out of your ass
long enough to ask others (preferably HP employees) you'd
know every word of what I said is true.
Click to expand...

I don't doubt it. HPQ's stock price rose 15% within minutes
of the announcing of Carly's departure.

Dave
 
David said:
I don't doubt it. HPQ's stock price rose 15% within minutes
of the announcing of Carly's departure.

Dave
Click to expand...

Carly's reign of terror was obvious for quite some time. At the
2002 shareholder's meeting, Walter Hewlett was given a standing
ovation, and Carly was booed. 'Course, the attendees were mainly
individual investors, not the big institutions that got bought off
with lucrative investment banking deals, and outright bribes.
Two million paid to Deutsche Bank for "market intelligence" comes
to mind:

http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2003-100.htm

Think of it. Martha's in the slammer, and Carly's walking around
scott free with a few hundred million in shareholder's money. Now
the CFO that had his hands really dirty in that deal is the acting
CEO. Golly gee, wonder if he's going to fire himself?

Back to the inkjet cartridges, can someone explain why the region coded
cartridges have almost escaped notice? Seems like a heck of a bigger
deal, at least to the Europeans, than a silly little time bomb that goes
off after 30 months:

http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB110593238031627672-IFjgYNmlad4nJysa3qHa6yAm5,00.html
 
Greg said:
Actually more disgusted than disgruntled, Ron. If you could
find some possible way of taking your head out of your ass
long enough to ask others (preferably HP employees) you'd
know every word of what I said is true.
Click to expand...
Perhaps it is, on the other hand, we have ONLY one data point by which
to make a decision on the issue. I would prefer more information, and
from more people. Some employees of very fine companies feel the same
as you do.
 
Greg said:
[...]

Regardless of the merit of this lawsuit, as an HP insider I can tell you
with certainty one should stay at least 10 feet away from _any_ HP
product produced in the last five years. Carly Fiorina was hired to
gut the company, and that's precisely what she did. Their business
Click to expand...

:-) Apparently nobody really likes or values her and
all voice joy and satisfaction now that she is gone...

I doubt however that her agenda was to 'gut the company',
she did however destroyed the famous HP culture. Spin-offs,
takeovers turned the legendary company into something
completely different: an ordinary computer provider with
peripherals... If you look for a HP lab device, ask for
Agilent.

Thomas
 
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