From my point of view HP printers are a bad investment.
“We have seen that you can embed viruses into cartridges, through the cartridge go to the printer, from the printer go to the network, so it can create many more problems for customers.”
Seems like it’s a problem of their own making tbh…
No kidding. “We’ve allowed our cartridges to arbitrarily execute code. It’s the user’s fault.”
Hey, we need a robust serial connection to our cartridges for checking ink levels. Nothing more basic would do. /s
And they’re investing in the customers in what sense? It’s the customers who make the investment in their products and get their dignity challenged in return.
I have a need for a printer and HP is solidly in the don’t-touch list. Companies that treat their customers so indignantly as HP should simply be raided and closed for good. Or perhaps, HP should realize that morons like this scumbag are a bad investment as a CEO.
I’m sure internally they have an internal dollar figure on cost per customer acquired. Such things as marketing, discounts, product availability and different stores, targeted marketing campaigns, B2B sales reps, I.e.identifying corporate customers before they are entrenched with another vendor and actioning on them first.
So in that mental model, each customer acquired has a cost, and the behavior of that customer has a benefit, I suppose what the HP representative is trying to say is the sale on the printer by itself is insufficient to justify the effort and cost of acquiring a customer. They want recurring revenue. Which everybody does
Yeah, it’s the “loss leader” strategy. Some HP printers are very cheap, sometimes cheaper than the cartridge you need to put in it. They’re doing it ridiculously aggressively.
I wonder whether they’d sell more if they put the prices up but promised no further charges or restrictions? It would give them a unique market position as a seller of premium trustworthy products. Brother is the closest to that at the moment, though their printers aren’t even more expensive. HP is certainly to be avoided.
I have a need for a printer and HP is solidly in the don’t-touch list.
The only HP printers I still recommend are the vintage ones from the pre-2005 era. HP 4050DTN and HP 5000DTN and the like. Absolutely rock-solid laser printers that don’t have DRM or any other shite. Hell, I can get overstuffed cartridges for the 4050 that can do 20,000 sheets at 5% coverage… who does that these days? And they’re capable of taking JetDirect cards clear up to the gigabit level.
HP lured me away from Apple about 15 years ago, with promises of better pay and benefits. I made the mistake of believing their lies, and proceeded to work in one of the most hostile environments I’d ever encountered. Aside from the open and constant sexual harassment, I was horrified to see customer service maliciously transfer callers to dead extensions or to the branch in the Philippines, then laugh about it. “Tech support” was for selling more products, not for resolving issues. Management was a shitshow of nepotism, falling-over-drunkenness, corruption, office affairs, and massive cover-ups.
I lasted 8 months, then I fled back to Apple, but I’ll never forget how HP blatantly loathed the customers.
Hps one of only two companies that will never get a penny from me again. I had an HP desktop that the power supply died on at the beginning of Covid only then did I realise it was propriety and they didn’t even have it in stock.
Kept checking for about a year and couldn’t get a replacement when every other computer I’ve ever owned I could have bought a power supply the same damn day.
For the record the other company is Sony who just decided to delete my account with a lot of paid games because I hadn’t logged in for about 6 months.
Honestly the only thing HP has ever made that I haven’t been horribly, horribly disappointed with is their monitors. Just through circumstance of ‘whatever-the-fuck-was-cheapest-but-not-total-ass-when-I-went-to-buy-them’ I’ve ended up with 4 different HP monitors over the years, including a 20ish year old 4:3 one which still goes strong to this day.
Every other product was pure unadulterated ass.
Looks like we’re at an impasse; customers don’t want to make a bad investment by using HP either.
Nah, that’s a good agreement. Sociopathic CEO tells customers to fuck off, customers tell him to fuck off. They all fuck off in agreement. Customers are happy without HP, I wonder how HP will de without customers.
That said, it seems customers or even profits are not essential to running a public company these days, all you need is investors.
