HP, the subject of several lawsuits over the years because of its underhanded business practices involving its printers, is now facing a suit over its Instant Ink program.
A federal suit was recently filed on claims that HP is cheating and misleading its customers whom it had enticed into its Instant Ink program with the promise that it would provide them with a constant supply of high-quality HP ink.
The HP program – as the company describes it – is pretty straightforward.
The company sends you cartridges or toners based on the number of pages you tell it you are planning to print monthly. The average owner purchase 100 pages a month, which costs $4.99. It promises customers will never run out of ink.
Through the internet, HP keeps track of your printing and when you get close to the number of pages you signed up for, it ships you new cartridges or toners. If you don’t print all the pages in the month, the rest rolls over to the next month.
It promises to send you prepaid mailers so you can send back the empty ink or toner cartridge for recycling. The company says almost all of its ink products are made of recycled containers.
However, the lawsuit says it doesn’t work as promised:
Cartridges and toners are not always sent in time, leaving customers waiting for days or weeks for a new supply.
Even when delivered on time, the ink cartridges and toners are sometimes faulty.
Prepaid mailers are not always supplied to customers.
If you cancel your plan, you will be unable to use the remainder of the ink you have purchased.
And if you run out of ink, and you purchase a cartridge or toner, HP blocks you from using it, a fact HP does not disclose.
The July 6 lawsuit, filed in a California federal court, seeks to represent all HP Instant Print customers who believe they have been cheated.
“HP routinely fails to timely provide Subscribers with replacement printer cartridges, and, even when it does, subscribers find themselves overwhelmed with errors that prevent them from printing,” says the suit filed by attorneys Mark Javitch and Thomas Zimmerman Jr.
“Printers commonly display error messages that render them inoperable, even when ink is available. As a result, Subscribers have been unable to use their printers for extended periods of time, rendering their printers entirely worthless.
The recycling program is also inconsistent. HP has told some customers whose cartridges don’t work, to throw them out instead of recycling them through HP.
One could assume that HP cheats its customers on ink is because that it where it makes most of its money. HP sells some of its printers for less than it costs them to manufacture, expecting to make its money from selling cartridges and toners.
For instance the HP Envy 4520 all-in-one printer, that sells for $70 is estimated to cost $120 to manufacture, according to Business Insider.
Both HP’s biggest competitors – Brother and Epson – have also been sued on claims it they improperly forced customers to use their ink. However, both suits were thrown out for lack of evidence.
PREVIOUS HP PRINTER LAWSUITS
Two years ago HP agreed to settle a class action lawsuit that accused the company of preventing customers from using off-brand ink cartridges by causing the printers to fail.
HP agreed to pay $1.5 million.
The suit said that starting in 2016 HP installed firmware in some “wireless printers that caused the printers to fail when being used with non-HP brand ink cartridges
“In such cases, error messages appeared on the printer and/or the device sending the print job to the printer stating that the printer error was due to a damaged or failed ink cartridge.”
Another federal suit was filed last year accusing HP of concealing that OfficeJet printers use color ink even when printing in black and white.
That means the even when printing in black, the printers used color ink. And once the color ink ran out, customers could not print in black until new color cartridges were installed.
“Consumers do not know, and have no reason to know, that the printers were purposefully designed to use color ink even when printing images or text that are purely black and white. Consumers are similarly unaware that the printers will not be able to print at all if the printers’ color ink has depleted,” says the suit filed by California attorneys Benjamin Heikali and Joshua Nassir.
Three other federal suits against HP were settled in 2011 with HP agreeing to make marketing changes and to pay millions of dollars to its customers.
The suits were filed accusing HP of installing software into some of its inkjet printers that falsely signaled that cartridges needed to be replaced because ink was low.
The suits involved HP’s false warnings – at times – that the ink was running low, pressuring customers to needlessly buy ink. HP agreed to pay customers up to $5 million for this scam as well as $2.9 million in attorneys’ fees.
