Using Instant Ink and Standard Ink in my Printer (Mixed Mode)

[Mike_YRU]

I have just signed up for Instant Ink and am about to receive my first shipment. Only the Yellow Ink has run out on my printer, so I will replace this one with the Instant ink version. I still have ~20% Cyan and Magenta standard ink left in my printer and  at leat 50% black remaining.

My questions are:

a) When I replace the yellow ink will every page I print going forward count towards my monthly Instant Ink page count?

b) If I just print using my black cartridge and do not use any colour at all, will that count towards my usage?

In summary what usage algorithm have HP implemented for customers who are transitioning to Instant Ink?

[KrazyToad]

@Mike_YRU

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[Mike_YRU · Accepted solution]

For those of you reading this post and wanting to know what the conclusion was, in summary no matter what mix of cartridges you have, as soon as you put in an Instant Ink cartridge all of your printed pages count towards your monthly total.

What I found was that as soon as I replaced my yellow cartridge and the printer went through its registration / initializing process, I was promoted to also replace the cyan and then the magenta cartridges (even though both these cartridges had ~ 20% ink left). I was not forced to replace my black cartridge (1) for the  Instant Ink one. However, when I printed two pages with black ink only (so no greyscale which uses the CMY cartridges) I saw my page count increase in the Instant Ink Portal (2).

I do not mind this because the cartridges in the printer are the original ones shipped with the printer so technically cost me nothing. But if I had paid for these cartridges then I might be a bit annoyed that -

a) I have thrown or preferably sent for recycling some perfectly good ink.
b) I am technically paying twice when I use black-ink only when printing. The firmware should be able to detect what type of print a customer did as it can tell what type of cartridge they have installed. But probably this is down to the “secret tracking dots” that modern printers put on a page. Hence, higher yellow ink consumption.

I think that HP has tried to and in my case has mitigated these minor issues by giving customers at least a month trial (and if you hunt around you can find more than that). You can also see from my Instant Ink summary page that although I am on a 50 page / month plan (3), HP has given me 300 pages / month (4) during my trial period. So my recommendation is to do any print projects you have been putting off during this trial period.

Not sure if the image will stay up with this post as it keeps getting removed