" his cartridges would stop working following two unsuccessful attempts by Epson to obtain payment for the subscription service "

So the ones he's already paid for will stop working?

Sounds like a fantastic service (in the literal sense of the word 'fantastic' - 'existing only in imagination, unreal' [OED]).

Theft?

... despite receiving fresh ink cartridges from the company, he is still unable to print anything ...

Much worse than that.

This chap's ability to use the printer he paid for is being blocked by the company he purchased it from because ... Whatever.

Or was it a gift from Epson albeit under certain condiitons?

No, it is not theft.

On one side it is the chap's stupidity lack of basic common sense.

And on the other it is Epson's predatory practises: scam, swindle, collusion, etc.

Just what was this chap thinking?

O.

Ah, but he hasn't "already paid" for them, he just rented them and has neglected to pay the monthly ransom subscription.

' he hasn't "already paid" for them '

But presumably he had paid for the printer than is no longer operative despite the cartridge not being empty. My guess is that the "stop printing" instruction would have to be to the printer, not to the cartridge, so he's been deprived of use for the thing he paid for. That does look a bit like theft.

It would be quite another matter (and perfectly legitimate) if, once the cartridges in hand ran out they stopped supplying more until he settled the account, but terminating the service as described seems, shall we say, rather less legitimate.

> he's been deprived of use for the thing he paid for

That's the pleasures of cool, hassle-free subscription services... You only have the right to pay, but actually using the thing you paid for is subject to so many caveats and provisos that it's definitely not guaranteed to happen when you want or need it.

But well, as P.T. Barnum is supposed to have said, "there is a subscriber born every minute".

It is the cartridge that is remotely bricked (through the printer firmware). He can switch the bricked cartridges out for normal, non-rental, cartridges or new rental ones, once the payment has been sorted out.

That said, I wouldn't want to put myself in that situation in the first place.

" It is the cartridge that is remotely bricked "

And there lies the problem. If they know there is an issue, they should be working with the customer to resolve it, not sticking their fingers in their ears and then bricking the cartridge.

It may not be Epson's fault, but it sure as hell isn't the customer's fault either.

"Epson, at time of publication, in response, said it hadn't received any formal customer complaints in writing, regarding the issue, to its head office".

Not quite.

You pay a monthly fee to print, and when a cartridge is empty, a replacement is sent. You are paying for the ability to print that month not for the cartridge. A cartridge will often last a few months, but you only pay a fraction of the value of the cartridge each month (probably based on projected printing volume).

If you stop paying, you haven't paid for what remains in the cartridge, so it isn't a cartridge or ink you have already paid for. Therefore the cartridge is bricked.

My HP has a similar scheme, but my printing is sporadic, one month I might print hardly anything, another month a lot, so I didn't bother, I just by cartridges as I need them.

Given this is Epson's snafu, at least in the communication department, this must be hurting them financially, as they will be sending out normal cartridges or replacement cartridges for all of those they have "wrongfully" bricked.

Yep you've described it perfectly.

I use HP's version of this, and it works great for me. Previously I bought cartridges but I print so little that after a year or two they'd stop printing well due to the ink drying out. So I'd lose 90% of the ink I paid for and be unable to print when I need to.

Now that I'm on the lowest tier monthly plan (15 pages for 99 cents IIRC...used to be 10 pages for free but I knew that wouldn't last forever) I pay less per year. I can get extra pages if I need to print more, of course, though if somehow I suddenly needed to print hundreds of pages I'd make other arrangements.

I haven't had the ink dry out since I went to this scheme (but it is a new printer and uses different cartridges) I'm not sure if the ink is formulated differently expecting people on this plan don't print too often or I've just been lucky. If it happens I can swap in the new unopened cartridges I have already been sent.

Don't buy an Epson printer / subscription service.

No, the moral is, don't buy anything that is called "smart".

Or a subscription service in general.

Well thats most peoples stuffed since most software like Autocad and Adobe these days is subscription only.

" Don't buy an Epson printer "

Funny this article turns up today. I got an Epson XP-345 back in 2017. Never used it as I subsequently got a cheap HP and their Instant Ink programme.

I dug the Epson out, unboxed it, set it up. Noticed the print quality was pretty poor (banding, obvious dithering) like something from the late 90s. But, okay, it was cheap.

Oh, but the scanner is faulty. Most of the page was okay, but there were a few lines of gibberish (noise?) across the page. Broken or faulty pixels? In a scanner that had never been used?

The printer worked as expected for the setup and installation. I turned it on a couple of days later, and it worked, for a while. Then it died. Died in a way that meant that it was shorting out the power supply. I unclipped it. 42v with nothing attached. Connect the printer, nice spark as it makes contact, then 0v across the terminals.

After about four hours of use.

Clearly, as it was bought in 2017 and unboxed in 2022 there's no chance of any guarantee.

So I took the thing apart to see what was inside (a paranoid number of ferrite rings!) and then.... let's just say a pickaxe [*] was involved. It was quite cathartic.

So I'll clip your quote and simply say "don't buy an Epson".

* - I did consider using the ride-on mower, but felt that I'd spend weeks picking up all the bits. Shame.

Or HP or ...

My guess is that in less than 2 years you won't be able to buy a printer WITHOUT taking out an ink subscription.

HTML is a mere 42 years old and works well for pretty much most documentation and if you dont make it paper shaped then you can read it on most devices and dont need to set yourself up as a hostage.

My wife runs patchwork classes. Her handouts include templates for marking out fabric. Pray tell how free-flowing documentation using HTML gets transferred to the fabric without printing.

Who says he was just printing out documentation? There are plenty of examples of where you still need to print things these days. I try and avoid it where I can (it's a hassle firing up a printer unless I really have to), but some times it is unavoidable.

How about a return label for defective Epson goods!??

Thank you! Thank you! I'm here all week!

And how would you print out that return label?

.. by taking your Epson printer to the local electrical waste recycling centre, throwing it into the skip, then stopping off at Currys to by a decent printer.

Good luck finding one. Anyone know of a decent DRM-free photo printer?

You could try going to the local electrical waste recycling centre and looking for a really dusty printer. Mine is ancient and as it uses an open source driver it has never received Epsom firmware downgrades. A decade's supply of third party ink recently set me back about £20.

What printer is this?

Come on, help your friendly internet freetards out!!!

Epsom stylus P50. Really, you are looking for anything that understands a documented system for communicating with printers (such as PCL) so that there will be an open source driver. I think you also need one that has not been connected to Windows for years. I believe the official drivers downgrade the firmware to reject third party ink but I do not have the nerve to test this. Try a web search for Linux printer support.

You can find a list of printers [1]here . One of the fun thing about The Linux Documentation Project is that the articles can be hopelessly dated. That one is from 2003 - which in this case might actually be a useful feature.

[1] https://tldp.org/HOWTO/Printing-HOWTO/index.html

Have a pint for your trouble.

You can even print it!

>Anyone know of a decent DRM-free photo printer?

Yes, however, you probably won't find it in Currys or elsewhere on the high street...

Try second hand websites, Wallapop has 'em

I came here to laugh at a very different story. The headline made me imagine a transient error in a cloud-based printing service and some pompous, irate people unable to print for few hours or a couple of days.

But this is pretty fucked up. Epson are cutting people off because their backend looks more like a scam than a legitimate service, and they refuse to put in place mitigation until asked (presumably they know everybody who banks with RBS?), and won't fix the issue or even warn people.

Shit happens. But that doesn't mean you have to behave like a shit when it does.

How are all the other subscription services coping with the new rules if Epson can't?

We'd have heard much more screaming if Amazon/Netflix/Disney+ etc. cut people off because the banks wouldn't pay up.

In this case, it's probably because Epson haven't got the financial reputation of Disney/Netflix/et al. And after incidents like this, their reputation is likely to sink ever lower! (joke)

The HP Instant Ink service is also a clusterfuck, not because of the same payment issues but because they will lock out printers from even being used.

A couple of years ago, I replaced my knackered Epson printer with a HP and it came with 3 months free instant ink service... So I used it, but never agreed to a continued subscription service.

HP locked the printer, and as I was given another by work... I packed it away and forgot about it.

Then a couple of months ago, my mums printer broke... she's also on the HP instant ink service (1.99 a month) as it works out cheaper over the year for her needs.

I gave her my printer and tried to connect it to her account... first it refused to do anything, even with stock cartridges installed (although printing blank sheets as I suspect old carts had dried up after 12 months in storage)... did a factory reset which at least unlocked it. Then it refused to allow it to be connected to her Instant Ink service as a replacement for the old printer, first saying it was connected to another account (it wasn't) and then asking if you wanted it removed from other account (Yes)... and then still refusing to allow it to be connected.

I wasn't about to go and spend £40-50 on new ink... just to test if the printer would actually work...

The solution... cancel the HP subscription and buy another Epson printer for the same cost as new Ink for the HP... but it comes with enough ink to print the contracts and docs we needed to for selling a house.

I was going to sign her up for the epson ready print... but I use Natwest... My mum on the other hand is with Lloyd's, so I'll do it via her bank instead.

But fuck HP... every single time I've had to suffer with a HP printer it's been a shit show... crappy quality prints and they break if you sneeze to hard next to one. At leastall of the Epson printers I've owned over the last 20yrs have been reliable and only broken due to my own negligence or because of a time when I had about 10 power cuts/surges in a couple of hrs that fried a few electronics... inc an Epson RX700 printer, a Sony 5.1 Home Cinema amp and a bedside alarm clock.

Ok I gotta ask, but why would you even bother getting the subscription service? A printer gives you plenty of warning when you're running low on ink, just order a new cartridge when it tells you to. Plenty of online retailers will deliver the new cartridge to your door, assuming it's not available at your local supermarket/computer shop.

You've just read how Epson happily screws over a whole bunch of their customers (anyone with RBS or NatWest) without really attempting to fix the problem, bricking their machines in the process, and you would still willing sign up to be held hostage for the next time they screw something up and decide to brick your machine?

Sorry, but I dont understand the rationale...

Because, at least for HP, the cost per-page of Instant-ink is much, much less than buying an HP cartridge from, say, Tescos.

If you print as rarely as I do, can I suggest you consider a B&W laser? I have a Brother L2720, the ink lasts forever. Color isn't missed.

I do have,as it happens a Brother HL-1110 laser. That gets used for routine stuff that doesn't need colour.( returns labels and the like). It's old, basic (USB) and uses compatible toner without any complaints. And it just goes on and on There are a lot of times when we do need colour, - being as we're in educational and youth work. And we do need the scanner on our Canon multifunction machine. It probably gets used more than the printer.If not for that I reckon the old Brother machine would be all we'd need.(And maybe a stand-alone scanner).

+1 other little Brother láser printers. I got one many years ago and I have not changed the toner once.

I don't miss full colour adverts on my boarding passes.

They do a colour version for 300€, but I haven't tried it.

They provide drivers for Linux.

... why would you even bother getting the subscription service?

... printer gives you plenty of warning when you're running low ...

Why?

Because somehow you have, for some strange reason, got it into your head that you're actually smarter than those who make a living from scamming/fleecing their customers.

ie: the hideous marketing drones who spend a great deal of their time and their company's money to figure out all the possible angles to screw you over. If possible, twice like in the article's case.

They designed this system, not to provide a better and more convenient service to their customers but to provide a constant and stable flow of income for their shareholders while at the same time preying on the credulity of their customer base.

To think that it is something else, as I subtly attempted to point out previously, is a very clear sign of stupidity.

Sorry, but I dont understand the rationale ...

That's because you are not stupid. 8^D !

If you must know, yes, I had an absolutely terrible week-end.

So shoot me.

O.

Or those that can't afford a lump sum, but can afford the 1.99 a month sub. Saving that 1.99 a month might be a better solution, but many can't manage that, if they didn't pay the 1.99 a month sub, they would spend it elsewhere and not save up for a new cartridge, when it would be required...

It is like paying car insurance with a one-off lump sum or spreading the cost quarterly or monthly. If you don't have the lump sum, you sometimes have to make the bargain with the devil.

This. The HP subs are less than Netflix. Works out to be about a euro a week.

Plus they count pages. A bit crap if you're trying to get something working and it spits a bunch of blank pages (yes, those are counted), but on the other hand it's useful that they don't distinguish between a colour print to regular paper, and an A4 size photo quality print.

It's nice to just print whatever I want, when I want, without stopping to think "how much is this going to cost". Replacement cartridges are not cheap, and a dozen full page colour prints can empty them. With Instant Ink, that's 12 pages, 88 left to go this month.

I know how much I used to spend on ink, I know how much I now spend. There may be other options (ink tanks and such) but for my needs, the subscription service is sufficient and affordable.

I also have a little laser for when I want to run off copies of datasheets and such.

Spreading the costs, for a lot of people. If you need to replace the cartridge at a time when the bank account is a little low on funds, you can't print. If you have a small monthly payment going out, it is in your monthly overheads and a new cartridge "magically" turns up when you need it.

I have an HP that can use this service, but my printing isn't regular enough for it to make sense, so I went with XL cartridges instead.

(And Epson didn't brick the printer in this case, according to the story, they bricked the cartridges. But that still doesn't excuse their communications incompetence.)

Convenience.

It's as simple as that, the app orders new ink for you when the ink runs low. It's pushed hard and is an easy sell because they aren't upfront about their habit of locking out printers *and* the cost is lower than just buying cartridges (from HP/Epson direct at least)

I've had to spend a lot of time explaining why it's a bad idea.

When you agree to use Instant Ink it clearly states that you will need to buy new cartridges to stop using it with Instant Ink.

If you just printed normally with it instead of taking advantage of the three months free you would be fine. The printers are Instant Ink capable, they do not require it. But the cartridges they send you will ONLY work for Instant Ink. You can still buy regular cartridges and go back to using it without the Instant Ink service.

Unless you have an HP from 15+ year ago I'm wishing I had grabbed the last of the LJ4700's my previous employer was dumping, I know it's a beast, but I know they work with out this frippery...

"Strong" Customer Authentication typically seems to involve being sent an SMS authentication token to verify the transaction. This, despite the well known insecurity of SMS, and indeed recent advice from EUROPOL not to use it for sensitive transactions.

What's worse, many businesses are still unaware of the requirement or are still unable to support it, and the banks I've dealt with are extremely unhelpful - to the extent that one of my banks would not tell me what the required process was until I complained directly to the Chairman of the bank. The response from the complaints deflection department to my letter to the Chairman explained the process but rejected my complaint merely stating "you'll have to find another way to pay the supplier", So much for the service of storing my money.

Given the commonly inept and insecure implementation, I firmly believe SCA is really about liability transfer, not security.

Depends. Most bank apps integrate the 2FA check, usually involving the smatphone biometric identification too. SMS despite its shortcomings is still useful when the other system doesn't work, or for people without a smartphone. My bank used to give customers a physical OTP token - but it looks it's now frowned upon because the OTP can't be linked to a specific transaction. while the SMS data can.

It's frowned upon because SMS is cheaper for the bank, nothing more.

And of course SCA fails miserably with regular payments. Nobody is around at two in the morning to authenticate each regular payment when it happens, if banks were really implementing SCA properly instead of handwaving it away then everybody's regular payments would have failed.

Sorry, but that's neither fair nor accurate.

A portion of my job requires a certain level of familiarity with regulations like this - I am (my employer is) in the financial services sector and based in the EU. Strong Customer Authentication - SCA was introduced by all banks in the EU as a direct consequence of European law - the EU PSD2 (EU Payment Services Directive) which - among other requirements - mandates the use of Strong Customer Authentication to replace previously used technologies like sending lists of pre-generated TAN codes to customers every couple of weeks. SMS *might* be cheaper compared to sending so called "TAN letters" to customers, but to be honest, TAN letters were not very expensive either given that it was a mass mailing operation. The environmental benefits were probably significantly higher than the financial benefits of going paperless, plus the customer convenience gain if done properly. Granted, implementing PSD2 correctly is hard and expensive, but Financial Institutions and in general Financial Services Providers have implemented PSD2 quite well - at least in my jurisdiction.

Here's another catch - the EU PSD2 directive is under the oversight of the EBA (European Banking Authority) and additionally the national financial regulatory authority of each individual country the bank is operating in and they each get to decide how secure the "secure" part of SCA needs to be for their jurisdiction - the EBA has provided a minimum via the so called PSD2 RTS (Regulatory Technical Standards). Do a web search for PSD2 RTS if you are interested.

p.s. You wrote "Nobody is around at two in the morning to authenticate each regular payment when it happens". Well, true, -but nobody should be around at two in the morning - or at any time of the day to authenticate anything. It's all done by the machines nowadays ;)

My bank, Sparkasse, in Germany, uses a separate authentication device, I have to stick my card into it and it reads an "active" barcode - flickering bars on the screen that build up the transaction information - and then gets me to confirm the amount and a/c number it read from the screen and gives me one time code to type into the transaction form.

A bit of a hassle, but more secure.