Can you save money with HP Instant Ink?

by Mark Townsend
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24 Feb, 2019
•

Deal or No Deal?

I carry out quite a few new printer setups for my customers and for those purchasing HP Printers the first question I am asked is should I go for HP Instant Ink or just buy my own cartridges? Many customers have purchased the HP Printer specifically to use HP Instant Ink and they don't always appreciate the information I give to them. As with anything new there are good things about it and bad, there will also be winners and losers. When purchasing the printer the Sales Representative may have only mentioned the good bits and the bad bits might have slipped his mind!! It is important to match your own situation with all of the information below and then you can make an educated decision.

The good bits are very quick to summarise and you will benefit from always having your ink to hand when you need it. You will get three months ink free and you will get your ink at a very good price. There is also an option to receive all of your ink free if you print 15 pages or less each month. However, there is no way to beat the system and therefore if you aren't honest with yourself when you setup your subscription you will lose out. You need to think how many pages you are really likely to use and go slightly higher rather than lower. You will be buying pages at a higher cost if you say 15 pages a month when you really print 50 pages a month. You can however rollover unused pages and also adjust your plan if you get it badly wrong during the setup phase.

As part of the setup your printer makes a connection with HP and from that point forward it reports every page you print back to HP. You will create an account with payment details included and they will take the money every month based on what your printer reports back to them. In the eyes of HP a page is a page so no differentiation is drawn between an A4 colour photograph with a huge amount of ink laid down on the paper and a sheet with the letters abc printed on it. The person who prints lots of A4 colour photographs will receive ink whenever they need it and the person that prints pages with a few letters on will pay the same even if they only need one cartridge a year. I previously mentioned that there are winners and losers with HP Instant Ink and if junior likes to hit print with one word on the page every 10 minutes you will pay for it!!

After the creation of your account HP send you a link where you can login to a portal with all the statistics about your printer. You will be able to monitor what you are really using and it is well worth keeping an eye on it to avoid shocks. For the first three months you will pay nothing based on the option you chose. If you said 50 pages a month and you have printed 100 you will pay for the excess pages during the free period but if you have kept below 50 you won't. Most people fail to monitor their printing and to be honest don't really want to be counting every page they print but the penalty you pay is that you suddenly notice £9.99 has come out of your account when you were expecting £3.99. You will have to count pages or regularly check the portal if you use HP Instant Ink and want to avoid surprises on your bank or credit card statement.

If the above hasn't already put you off then there are a couple more things that you ought to know that might just change your mind. The Ink HP send you is described as 'Extra Large Capacity' and isn't available in any shop. This makes sense as why would they want to keep incurring postage when they can send you very high capacity cartridges? However, the interesting fact is that you don't actually own the ink they are sending to you - HP do. Your printer knows the ink isn't yours as HP will have updated the firmware to tell it this and any action that you take in breach of what you have agreed to will see your printer grind to halt. If you cancel your subscription, bounce a payment or disconnect your printer from the Internet you will find it immediately stops printing. It doesn't matter if the cartridges are 90% full, the ink isn't yours and the printer knows it and won't print. If you do cancel HP will send you a pre-paid envelope to return their ink. There aren't any penalties if you don't return it but you won't be able to use it and nor will anybody else you give it to. It is fair to point out though that you haven't lost the use of your printer altogether and if you buy some new cartridges from the shop and fit them it will start working again.

The final strange quirk is one that makes it seem as if HP own the whole printer rather than just the ink. This quirk kicks in if your printer actually breaks and either can't be repaired or a repair is uneconomic. When this happens if you don't want to lose any rollover pages or ink you have accumulated you have to use HP's replacement program for your printer. You will need to go to HP's website and use the 'Replace a Printer' option rather than heading to your well known local store and getting a great deal on a new printer. You can of course still do the latter but you will need to start from scratch and setup a new Instant Ink program rather than being able to carry forward what you have already purchased.

For many the unknown drawbacks are likely to put them off Instant Ink. The main purpose of owning your own printer is to be able to hit print whenever you fancy it and not having to worry about every single print. You may find yourself counting pages and worrying about whether a print is really necessary or not which takes away the whole joy of home printing. As always if you need any help with the purchase or setup of a new printer then call Mark on 07557 483438, e-mail mark@churchdowncomputers.co.uk or fill out the form at the bottom of the Contact page.

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