Posted by: George Gombossy July 25, 2021

Over the years, HP has received several lawsuits for its improper business practices involving printers, and is now facing a lawsuit against its Instant Ink program.

A federal lawsuit was recently filed, accusing HP of defrauding and misleading customers who lured them into the Instant Ink program and promising to provide them with a continuous supply of high-quality HP ink.

The HP plan-as the company describes it-is very simple.

The company sends you ink cartridges or toner based on the number of pages you tell it you plan to print each month. The average owner buys 100 pages per month at a cost of $4.99. It promises that customers will never run out of ink.

Through the Internet, HP will track your printing, and when you are close to the registered number of pages, it will send you a new ink cartridge or toner. If you do not print all the pages of the current month, the remaining pages will scroll to the next month.

It promises to send you a prepaid mail so that you can send back empty ink or toner cartridges for recycling. The company said that almost all ink products are made from recycled containers.

However, the lawsuit alleges that it did not work as promised:

Ink cartridges and toners are not always delivered in time, leaving customers to wait days or weeks to get new supplies.

Even when delivered on time, ink cartridges and toners sometimes fail.

Prepaid mail is not always provided to customers.

If you cancel the plan, you will not be able to use the remaining ink that you have purchased.

If you run out of ink and you buy an ink cartridge or toner, HP will prevent you from using it, and HP will not disclose this fact.

The lawsuit filed in California federal court on July 6 is intended to represent all HP Instant Print customers who believe they have been deceived.

"HP often fails to provide subscribers with replacement printer cartridges in a timely manner. Even if they do, subscribers will find themselves overwhelmed by mistakes and make them unable to print," said the lawsuit filed by lawyers Mark Javitch and Thomas Zimmerman Jr..

"Printers often display error messages that make them inoperable even when ink is available. As a result, subscribers cannot use their printers for a long time, making their printers completely worthless.

The recycling plan is also inconsistent. HP has told some customers whose ink cartridges cannot be used to throw them away instead of recycling them through HP.

One can assume that HP cheated its customers on ink because it made most of the money there. HP sells some printers at prices below manufacturing costs, hoping to make money by selling ink cartridges and toner.

For example, according to Business Insider reports, the manufacturing cost of the HP Envy 4520 all-in-one printer, which sells for $70, is estimated to be $120.

HP's biggest competitors-Brothers and Epson-have also been sued, claiming that they improperly forced customers to use their ink. However, both lawsuits were dismissed due to insufficient evidence.

Two years ago, HP agreed to resolve a class-action lawsuit accusing the company of preventing customers from using non-branded ink cartridges by causing printers to malfunction.

HP agreed to pay 1.5 million US dollars.

The lawsuit alleges that starting in 2016, HP has installed firmware in some "wireless printers", causing printers to malfunction when using non-HP branded ink cartridges.

"In this case, an error message will appear on the printer and/or the device sending the print job to the printer, stating that the printer error is caused by a damaged or malfunctioning ink cartridge."

Another federal lawsuit filed last year accused HP of concealing that OfficeJet printers use color ink even when printing in black and white.

This means that even when printing in black, the printer uses color ink. Once the color ink is used up, the customer cannot print black until a new color ink cartridge is installed.

"Consumers don’t know, and there’s no reason to know that printers use color ink purposefully even when printing pure black and white images or text. Consumers also don’t know that if the printer runs out of color ink, the printer will not be able to print at all," According to the lawsuit filed by California lawyers Benjamin Heikali and Joshua Nassir.

Three other federal lawsuits against HP were settled in 2011, and HP agreed to make marketing adjustments and pay its customers millions of dollars.

The lawsuits allege that HP installed software in some of its inkjet printers that incorrectly signaled the need to replace the ink cartridges because of insufficient ink.

These lawsuits involve HP's false warnings—sometimes—that ink is about to run out, forcing customers to purchase ink unnecessarily. HP agreed to pay clients up to US$5 million and US$2.9 million in legal fees for the scam.

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