HP

For decades I was a loyal repeat customer of HP printers. My printing needs require a fast laser jet, no color needed, capable of holding an entire ream of paper. Such a printer typically cost me about $1200 dollars. It was worth it to get a product that rarely, if ever, broke down and that printed hundreds of pages fast. For quite some time, I could pay a modest amount extra for a high capacity toner cartridge.

Then toner got stupidly expensive. To the point where I just wasn’t going to pay hundreds of dollars for toner. I went 3rd party and was happy for a bit until the printer started refusing to work because of the 3rd party toner — that had previously worked. Then lawyers (other lawyers and advocates, not my lawyers) got involved and they backed out the block. But I was pretty annoyed.

And then I upgraded my OS and I spent HOURS trying to figure out why my printer wouldn’t work anymore. The HP website had changed their driver download pages such that you could find out what driver was needed but not download it. They claimed I needed special HP software which claimed to install the needed driver, but never actually did. What became clear to me was that HP had deliberately bricked a $1200 printer.

I said Fuck You HP and bought a Canon printer that cost significantly less, does everything I need it to, and works.

As I write this HP is being burned hard by a decision (in certain countries) to make every support caller wait 15 minutes before anyone would take the call. People are enraged, and rightfully so. HP is a dark and evil company. They backed out that change too, but I bet they’re doing it anyway.

One day HP won’t have any customers left to screw over. I anxiously await this day.