HP’s All-In Plan is supposedly the future of “hassle-free” printing and on the surface, it might even seem reasonable. For a monthly subscription, customers receive a printer of their choice*, automatic ink delivery**, 24/7 live support***, and access to next-business-day replacements****. Doesn’t that sound great (if you ignore all the asterisks)?
For those who do loads of printing, the benefits probably seem enticing. If you’ve ever had to print something in a hurry only to find you’ve run out of ink or the printer jams halfway through the job, you might even welcome a subscription plan like this. At least, that’s what the folks at HP were probably thinking when they came up with the idea.
In reality, HP‘s subscription plan is questionable due to a worrying number of fine-print clauses and subscription limitations. On top of that, after the plan’s 30-day trial, you’ll be locked into a two-year subscription or forced to pay a cancellation fee that, in some cases, exceeds the printer’s retail value.
“Never own a printer again”
About those asterisks. Firstly, subscribers will receive “[their] choice of HP’s most trusted printers” but only if their choice is one of three models — the ENVY 6020e, ENVY Inspire 7258e, or the OfficeJet Pro 9010e. These three models form the basis of HP’s three-tiered plan with each tier sporting a starting cost of $7/m, $9/m, and $13/m, respectively (or R132/m, R170/m, and R245/m converted).
However, it should be noted that those starting prices also come with per-month print limits. If you’d like the cheapest printer but think you’ll print more than 20 pages per month, you’ll need to cough up $9/m for 50 pages per month or $11/m to increase your limit to 100 pages per month.
The most pricey package includes the OfficeJet Pro 9010e which will allow affluent subscribers to print up to a whopping 700 pages every month for “just” $36/m (R680/m). If you exceed your “monthly allowance”, HP’s FAQ page says “additional sets of 10-15 pages will be automatically added to your monthly invoice at $1 per set.” Thankfully, any pages you don’t use of your quota will accumulate and you can “roll over up to three times the number of pages in your monthly plan.” So it’s like buying mobile data and we all know how not-frustrating that process is.
HP wants to watch you print
The other asterisks, like automatic ink delivery and 24/7 support, might seem useful but that’s only because you’re used to paying exorbitant amounts of money for them. What you may not be used to is HP looking over your shoulder at every print job. One of the many questionable terms in this subscription plan is HP’s insistence on keeping your rented printer connected to the internet. If you don’t, HP’s All-In Plan terms of service states:
“If the Printer is not connected to the Internet, then You may not be able to access Your Services including the ability to print; however, You will continue to be charged for the Services.”
HP justifies this requirement by saying the company needs to monitor ink cartridge levels, page count, and “to ensure that You are receiving the requested Service, to prevent unauthorized use of Your account and to improve Your experience with HP products and services.”
That kind of monitoring makes sense. What makes less sense is why HP would need to remotely monitor and track the type of documents you print, the devices or software you use to start a print job, and “other types of metrics related to your Services.”
Regarding that data, although HP’s privacy policy does state that users can opt out of sharing personal data, the All-In Plan’s TOS also states:
“Subject to the terms of this Agreement, You hereby grant to HP a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free right to use, copy, store, transmit, modify, create derivative works of and display Your non-personal data for its business purposes.”
Thankfully, HP’s All-In Plan is only available to US customers, for now. And they can keep it.