HP CEO says customers who don't use the company's supplies are "bad investments"
HP CEO says customers who don't use the company's supplies are "bad investments"
HP is very insistent that users of its printers don't turn to cheaper third-party alternatives for their ink cartridges. It introduced a feature called Dynamic Security in...
Weirdly enough, everyone else thinks HP equipment is a bad investment.
143Prime example that for a publicly traded company the people buying the products are not customers for whom to create value, but a resource to extract value from.
Shareholders are the real customers for whom they create value.
72The entire point of maximizing profit is charging the most while expending the least.
It's a game of seeing how low people's standards are and trying to lower them even further.
As customers, the secret is to have higher standards. Unfortunately, this generation prides itself on avoiding conflict at all costs so they just take it up the ass and beg for more.
11"Every time a customer buys a printer, it's an investment for us. We are investing in that customer, and if that customer doesn't print enough or doesn't use our supplies, it's a bad investment."
You hit the nail right on the head. They don't see their customers as people buying their products, where they typically would be incentivized to deliver a good product at a good price. Instead, they see their customers as people being trapped into some sort of shitty subscription with them, like a cable or cell phone provider.
8
An HP Printer is a bad investment.
60I wouldn't even use the word investment
12My HP 1300n is a beautiful beast of a printer, but I also got it for free and have never put name brand toner in it.
An HP cart is over $200! Meanwhile TrueImage offers theirs for $15/pc.
5
The first thing they teach you in CEO school is to churn out terrible products with DRM subscription refills where the DRM doesn’t survive more than an hour. That’s why we CEOs all have Juiceros, HP printers, and children who respect us.
42Exhibit B on CEOs not being worth the obscene money they make. This dude made $20 million in 2022.
38And consumers not being able to choose which ink they purchase makes HP printers a bad investment. It goes both ways. It was nice of them to admit what lengths they'll go to to force us to use their proprietary ink cartridges though.
29I don't get why HP continues selling in the consumer market if they are struggling so much to make a profit.It seems like they are trying to force a business model on the wider market that doesn't work.
The subscription model makes more sense in the B2B world where companies just want fixed costs without doing too much shopping around (for things like printer cartridges anyway).
24Maybe they think there's a large untapped market for home businesses, but I don't think there are a lot that need to print frequently
3Because this is the HP that's focused on consumers, that's their business. The enterprise segment was spun off in to Hewlett Packard Enterprise. They do have commercial printers, but it's not that much larger of a business for them than home printer, from what I can gather.
3
if the customer does not print enough
Meaning all home users are a bad investment for HP.
That explains the ink cartridges malfunctioning before giving enough prints. That's been engineered into them.
22I wonder when someone will come up with a hipstery, fancy-looking printer that sells on the basis of "we don't give a crap about all that, here's a bag of ink refills,, just pay us more up-front".
All the tech startups are out there trying to get you into a subscription, I think we're getting to the point where this is annoying enough that you could sell very expensive, fashionable small-run hardware to people on the basis of not being this.
22They're called laser printers. Ink is for idiots, especially if you only print once in a while.
24I’ve been told that this is Brother Printers but I don’t own one as I no longer need a printer. Not sure how accurate but quite a few folk claim Brother is the last bastion of just buying and using a printer with whatever ink you put through it.
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What investment are they making in customers? Are they selling something at a loss? Should the FTC BoC ask what exactly they mean here?
22Yes, they sell the printer for a loss and the ink for a crazy markup.
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TIL Customers aren't customers. Customers are investments.
22You say that like it's a bad thing?
When I buy a jar of peanut butter, if I have a good experience eating it I'm going to buy that brand again. "Investing" in your customers is business speak for making sure your customers have a good experience.
The disconnect here is HP doesn't seem themselves as being in the "printer" business. They see themselves as being in the ink/paper/repairs business... and they advertise their printers as costing 8.6 cents per page. If you're happy to pay that much, then I'd argue HP probably is a good choice.
Personally I use a basic Brother laser printer, with cheap paper and cheap toner it comes in at around 1 cent per page. When I need higher quality, I get it printed by a professional printer - those cost quite a bit more than HP's pricing but I don't do it often and it's much higher quality than any (affordable) HP printer.
4Investing in customers is not necessarily the same as customers being investments.
I would argue that HP made bad investments in their customers and their customers not being bad investments.
4
Maybe take it as a sign that your product sucks?
21Too much subsidized by accessories and usables*
2
What do you do when you have the monopoly?
Turn the consumer into the commodity!
17Hp just trying to save the environment by making home printing as painful as possible. It really is a 4d chess move
17Investments? Do customers cost you money? That’s now how any of this is supposed to work. I’m not sure the CEO of HP knows anything about business. Dude, the customers are supposed to give YOU the money.
17Yes. They are investments. It's a very common business model across several industries. To sell the initial machine for net cost or even at a loss, if it means customers will have to come back to you for additional supplies. Because that's where the money is.
I'm extremely confident that the CEO of the very profitable company HP. Knows more about business than you do.
10I mean, yeah. Cost of acquisition is a thing. I’m hardly an exec, but basically it’s amortizing total cost of acquisition efforts over net new subs.
In no way do I intend to defend the shitshow that is HP. Just pointing out it’s a valid metric.
1
I have an HP BW laser printer with an offbrand cartridge that I paid a fraction of the price. The printer screams at me about critically low ink since about a year but prints are totally fine and as good as the first day.
I'm sorry for your loss HP.... You can suck it
16I have a Canon Color LaserJet scanner/copier/printer for documents, and a large format Canon inkjet photo printer. Aftermarket toner, aftermarket ink, and they work flawlessly. I did a ton of research for both. I would never buy an HP printer.
16Aftermarket toner, aftermarket ink, and they work flawlessly. I did a ton of research for both. I would never buy an HP printer.
I did the same when I purchased my Samsung color laser. I specifically excluded HP....then Samsung went and sold their entire damn printer division to HP. I refuse to use the Samsung drivers now because I suspect HP would push firmware into the unit blocked non-HP owned toner.
10
He's not wrong. They are bad for their product as a subscription model.
Just like anyone who still buys HP. If you buy HP, you deserve their absolute garbage products.
16Boo fucking hoo, HP.
16The "P" in HP stands for poop.
13HP actually stands for (extremly)high profits. It refers to the how much money they make from ink
6Heap of Poop, because we can't say the S word to investors.
1
I thought it was Printer
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Executives lately are going full James Bond villain. They should evil laugh more.
12Fucking Clowns. Being a shareholder means you aren’t buying their shitty printers or what ^^?
12Kind of like their stock bud dum tssss
9Typical overreaching corporate dogs
9I was fortunate enough to get an older HP color laser MFD that can use 3rd party toner carts. I've never bought a first line HP cartridge for it and I never will. My next printer will be some other brand that plays nice with customers.
The only reason I even have this printer now is because I got it crazy cheap off of craigslist about 10 years ago, with extra supplies. When it dies, I'll get a brother or something better. I've bought 3 sets of toner carts for it in 10 years or so for a grand total of maybe 150$, and I use it a lot.
5I don't want you to invest in me HP.
3HP: why can't we be together? Me: It's not you, it's me.
2I mean, doesn't this make sense? Why market and make products for people you don't know will buy, especially if you already have a market
2He said the quiet part out loud.
2
Eh, sure, that sounds accurate if a bit blunt.
-6If they are selling their printers at a small loss because they want to make money on selling ink that's basically fine. Sell the ink, make money. If they want to overcharge for the ink people will look elsewhere. If they have to DRM the printers to force people to buy their ink then that's just fucked up.
5To the downvoters, I mean this in a factual sense, since HP sells printers ar a loss, which is a sort of investment, since they sell the ink at a high markup to recoup their costs and earn money.
So if customers buy their cheap printer, but not their expensive ink, then the investment HP made in the customer is a bad investment for HP.
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