Price increase of HP Instant Ink

[lohr500]

I'm going to cancel my £1.99 subscription as I object to the large increase as well.

I'll take my chances with cheap Chinese cartridges off ebay going forward and dump the printer if the cartridges cause it to fail.

Looks like you can ger a set of 2 x black and 1 x c/m/y for £9.99.

I only use the 8620 Officejet pro for low quality prints and copies anyway.

My next printer definitely won't be HP.

Hopefully many others will do the same and make HP realise that we aren't mugs.

[choddo]

Got the same email today

Cancelling as soon as the cartridges I just ordered arrive. Never got full value out of the 50 pages/mth price anyway, though it was convenient, but the 10 tier is too few.

It's not a lot of money but a 50% jump is so outrageous I'm cancelling out of principle and my next printer won't be an HP. I won't ditch it immediately, that would be insanely wasteful, but I won't be buying or recommending HP again.

[choddo]

Don't forget HP and HPE are two different companies now - don't give the HPE team TOO much grief 😉

[Laew]

Only issue my friend is that the minute you cancel the HP Ink plan, your current cartridges are blocked. My tenant left one so used it as spare - but I cancelled his HP Ink - it immediately was blocked.  FYI. 

[choddo]

Yes, thanks for the pointer. I was fortunately aware of that. HP will get them back for recycling or whatever. I won't cancel until the new ones arrive.

[ValerieBH]

With all of our complaints about the price increase, what are we going to do about it?  How do we get our message to HP management?  

[PWB33]

I was still using the initial set up cartridges and so called 6 month ‘free ink’ when I had my Email about the 50% increase. I will be cancelling my subscription when the 6 months is up and using my Epson instead. This  50% increase is outrageous. 

[Jaytee888]

@ValerieBH,

this thread is getting quite lengthy now and you may have missed some comments.

In the absence of any further response from HP staffs on this forum, and the difficulty many of us have had in achieving meaningful conversation with  HP through the chat channels, in the UK, Trading Standards*** have been contacted (although more complaints to them might be useful); some respondents have contacted Martin Lewis and apparently there’s a “Contact the HP CEO” button somewhere.   
As I’ve said before, price increases are a fact of life, but 50% is unconscionable.  However the ‘bait and raise’ policy is my main concern where HP appear to have enticed new customers to enrol in their InstantInk programme and immediately notify of the increase while continuing to advertised the old rates.

Many have threatened to cancel as soon as they have received their first cartridges, but HP will immediately make them unuseable.  
Many say they will goto another manufacturer, although I suspect similar practices are employed by some of them.  It’s almost as if there is a price gouging cartel, and no matter where we go, at some point we are going to be unhappy with service value. 
But we will continue to keep this thread going … and growing … until HP step out of the shadows and resolve this sorry situation.

*** if you DO complain to Trading Standards, I don’t *think* just complaining about the price increase will cut any ice, but you could try.   You may need to put forward an argument surrounding the practice of NOT advising prospective buyers about price increases which are already being notified to existing users AND continuing to advertise the previous rates. 

[Llanelliguy]

I think it's about spreading this message as much as we can. 

Most people that commented on this subject are probably members of other forums, so maybe let's start spreading this message that could be a start. The more people that comment and complain.to HP the better, and there must be thousands of us that have had this increase. 

In the next few days I will start emailing magazines, other forums and even Martin Lewis. Someone on here has even mentioned writing to the CEO of HP,  again what have we got to lose.

HP can not get away with this. 

[Jaytee888]

@llanelliguy

I suspect HP will keep their heads down until Feb 12 when I feel they think that this will all go away when I believe the price increase will probably go public on the HP shop website.  Lots of suspecting and feeling and thinking there as we don't and probably never will know what's going on.  As of 5 minutes ago when I checked the HP shop, they were still  advertising the current rates of course to attract new customers who will only know of the rise after they have bought their new printer and signed up to InstantInk. My very recent purchase was based in part on the InstantInk rates.

So come Monday, I'll be emailing mags and newspapers and any other media outlets and trade organisations and consumer protection bodies I can think of.