Poor Service from HP Instant Ink

[LH294]

purchased a new HP printer a few months ago and enrolled in the Instant Ink subscription service, expecting convenience and reliability. Unfortunately, my experience has been disappointing.

Despite the promise of timely cartridge delivery, I often had to wait several days—leaving me unable to print—whereas I could receive replacements next-day via Amazon. After a few months of acceptable performance, the printer stopped working. The colour cartridge light remained on even though I had just installed a new subscription cartridge.

When I reached out for support, I was only able to interact with a chatbot, which offered generic responses that didn’t address my issue. Out of frustration, I purchased a black-and-white cartridge from Amazon, installed it, and was able to print immediately.

Soon after, I received an email from HP Instant Ink stating that using a non-subscription cartridge interfered with the service. Given that my own solution worked and I can reliably source ink myself, I decided to cancel my subscription and return to a more traditional, dependable approach.

My subscription expired on 28th October. Today, I received another email informing me that the colour cartridge—still nearly full—is now unusable because I’m no longer subscribed. This feels unnecessarily restrictive and wasteful, especially since I rarely print in colour.

Overall, this experience has been frustrating and has eroded my confidence in HP’s products and services. I hope this feedback helps improve the Instant Ink program for future users, but I personally won’t be purchasing another HP printer.

[Garp_senchau]

@LH294, Welcome to HP Support Community,

Thank you for posting your query; I’m here to help by guiding you through steps to resolve this issue

I’m really sorry to hear about your experience with HP Instant Ink. I understand your frustration.

Since Instant Ink is a subscription service, once your subscription ends, the ink cartridges linked to it will stop working, even if they’re still full. This is part of how the service is designed.

I also apologize for the poor support experience you had. We aim to provide better service, and I’m sorry we didn’t meet your expectations.

Thanks for sharing your feedback. It helps us improve. If you ever need assistance in the future, don’t hesitate to reach out.

I hope this helps.

Take care and have a good day. 

Did we resolve the issue? If yes, please consider marking this post as "Accepted Solution" and click "Yes" to give us a helpful vote - your feedback keeps us going!

Regards,

[LH294]

The service is appalling and what has added insult to injury is that, having cancelled my subscription several days ago, and receiving confirmation that my subscription was cancelled, I see on my bank that a further subscription payment is being taken today.  Absolutely unacceptable.

I have now cancelled the payments through my bank but am totally unimpressed with this "service".

I work for a lawyers and am considering what legal action can be taken as I see from the other feedback that many people have experienced the same issues as me.

It's also impossible to contact anyone if you want help, but as soon as you do anything on your own to fix a problem, you're contacted via email immediately so there must be some monitoring of communications.

[Kuroi_Kenshi]

Hi @LH294,

Thank you for the response.

We've exhausted our troubleshooting options here.

We recommend taking the conversation to our phone support team. They'll work with you one-on-one to get the issue sorted, possibly with some remote assistance magic. 

It's a simple 2-step process.

Step 1: To contact us, click here to visit the Instant Ink support page. 

step 2: You can find the support number in the middle of the page. 

Feel free to come back here anytime for further assistance. 

If this solution hit the spot, please come back and click "Accepted Solution" to help others find the answer. And if you'd like to say thanks, select "Yes" on the bottom left of the public post, as that would make our day! 

Take care, and have an amazing day! 

Best regards,