Submission + - HP are STILL regionalising their printers 2
norite writes: I recently moved from the UK to Canada, and took my HP3050 printer with me. The removals firm told me to discard any printer cartridges as they could leak, and would not ship our things.
After our move, I started looking for cartridges, but bizarrely, I couldn't find the correct numbered ones, although I did find equivalent ones that would fit our model of printer. Some further research revealed that these would not work in our UK purchased printer, because like DVD players, the printer was region coded. I would have to contact HP and hope I found a representative who would understand the situation, (undoubtedly spending ages on the phone) as not many of them do and get it reset to the new region. Unfortunately, I had already discarded the cartridges so I could not print off any initial printer config pages for them to use to give me a new region code.
Fortunately, I've avoided the headache that this person went through 3 years ago I've ended up ordering much cheaper cartridges from the UK and several refill kits. I had no idea HP did this sort of sneaky, underhand tactic, and all it has achieved is that I'll probably never buy another HP product again. It seems there's no obvious benefit to consumers in HP doing this, other than it prevents them buying cheaper inks and therefore maximising profits, so what do the Slashdot community think of printer regionalisation?
After our move, I started looking for cartridges, but bizarrely, I couldn't find the correct numbered ones, although I did find equivalent ones that would fit our model of printer. Some further research revealed that these would not work in our UK purchased printer, because like DVD players, the printer was region coded. I would have to contact HP and hope I found a representative who would understand the situation, (undoubtedly spending ages on the phone) as not many of them do and get it reset to the new region. Unfortunately, I had already discarded the cartridges so I could not print off any initial printer config pages for them to use to give me a new region code.
Fortunately, I've avoided the headache that this person went through 3 years ago I've ended up ordering much cheaper cartridges from the UK and several refill kits. I had no idea HP did this sort of sneaky, underhand tactic, and all it has achieved is that I'll probably never buy another HP product again. It seems there's no obvious benefit to consumers in HP doing this, other than it prevents them buying cheaper inks and therefore maximising profits, so what do the Slashdot community think of printer regionalisation?
