There have been a couple articles that were run by The Consumerist this week (here and here) where a former Hewlett-Packard employee has released some very interesting company secrets. Here are some of the ones that really stuck out for me.
- Many HP Printers, like their laser printers, have a built-in page-count after which they won’t work. This resides in the a transpart sometimes called image or drum kit. Rather than get the printer fixed, it’s often cheaper to buy a new printer, OR you can do a NV ram reset. It resets everything in the printer, including all the page counts, but it’s not without risks.
- If a set of cartridges cost more than the printer, don’t buy the printer. It’s considered a “throwaway” printer. HP service techs are told to spend no more than 30 minutes working on these because at that point, you are costing HP money.
- HP considers countries like Canada to be not worth the time or effort to market to. The market base in there is equivalent to one of the smaller American States. If you are calling in from Canada, you have to prove that you are in warranty and some of the features that Americans get, Canadians don’t.
You can view all the “secrets” via the links above. All I can say is I hope these issues are not enforced by all printer companies because breaking my printer after a specific page count is no different than the RIAA destroying my music with DRM. They’re both shady practices and HP should be sued if this can be proven to be true.
Oh, and just one question. When does the pretexting kick in and where’s Patricia Dunn when you really need her?
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