- Report: #1483591
Complaint Review: HP - Palo Alto California
Reported By:
Amy -
Atlantic Beach, Florida, United States
Submitted:
Updated:
-
Author Confirmed
Why?
HP
3000 Hanover Street Palo Alto, 94304-1185 California, United States
Web:
https://support.hp.com/us-en/products/printers
Categories:
Business Rating:
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HP HP Printers Hewlett Packard Hewlett-Packard Hewlett-Packard Company HP printers now REQUIRE you to buy their HP brank ink cartridges Palo Alto California
Sneaky business practices and unethical and fraud from HP - beware!!
I've owned several HP Officejet printers over the past 20 years and I have always purchased 3rd party ink jet cartridges. My latest printer (2015) was connected to my home network. A few months ago, I got a message from HP saying I needed to update my software with a new "security patch". I did so and then it completely stopped working. Nothing I tried worked. I called HP help with no results. I looked on line for a solution with no results. Believing that this one had died, I bought a new HP OfficeJet and trashed the old one. Once the HP ink cartridges that came with the new printer were used up, I ordered new ones - but NOT HP branded. They did not work at all. So after doing some more in-depth research, I found out that now HP's business model is to force their own customers to purchase their HP ink cartridges or the machine will not work at all. (The new business model is much like razors - sell the razors cheap but then sell the blades that fit those razors at gigantic margins to grow profits. It seems that the mark up on ink cartridges is something like 1000%).
This should be illegal. And at the very least, the consumer should know BEFORE they buy the printer that they will be required to purchase only ink cartridges from HP with the special chip embedded in them in order for it to work - and for the lifetime of the printer. (And to think I threw away a perfectly working printer without knowing it). This is FRAUD, pure and simple.
Oddly enough, there was a class action lawsuit in 2018 about this and HP was convicted guilty and had to pay $1.5 million for the settlement fund (to 50,000 people in the class). Strange thing is, all this happened to me at the beginning of 2019............so apparently they are STILL doing the same thing.
Why has the media not picked up on this decptive business practice and the fact that I guess a judge slapping them with a $1.5 million judgement did nothing to change their business?
After many years of being a loyal customer, I will never, ever purchase anything HP again based on this practice and discourage everyone I know to do so. This is criminal.
