Tech giant shamed into printer ink U-turn

A COMPUTER giant was forced to back down last night after it secretly prevented tens of thousands of customers’ printers from using rival brands’ cheaper ink cartridges.

Hewlett-Packard made the embarrassing U-turn following a software update two weeks ago that stopped the printers working.

Error messages appeared claiming the devices had a ‘cartridge problem’, or that cartridges were missing or damaged.

Yesterday, the US technology firm, which wanted to force customers to use its own cartridges, yesterday promised another software update in two weeks to reverse the restriction.

But its behaviour angered customers and led to criticism from the technology campaign group the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) that was reported in the Mail yesterday.

HP and other manufacturers often sell printers at a loss, knowing they will make more money by selling their own ink cartridges, which can cost three times as much as unbranded cartridges.

Some Canon or HP cartridges are priced at more than £75 – making the ink more expensive than Dom Perignon champagne, while specialist firms such as Inkmasters offer sets for just £22.98.

The EFF said more than 10,000 people had called on HP to ‘make amends for its self-destructing’ printers, which had ‘shocked and angered’ customers.

A spokesman said: ‘We’re still asking Hewlett-Packard to promise that it will never again use a security update to roll back features on which its customers rely. Custom- ers should be able to buy an HP printer without fear that the company will later place artificial limits on the printer’s use.’

In a letter to HP chief executive Don Wiesler, EFF wrote: ‘By giving tens of millions of your customers a reason to mistrust your updates, you’ve put them at risk of future infections that could compromise their business and home networks, their sensitive data, and the gadgets that share their network with the printers, from baby monitors to thermostats.’

A Hewlett-Packard spokesman said: ‘We should have done a better job of communicating about the authentication procedure to customers, and we apologise.’

He claimed HP had introduced the software update to ‘protect’ customers from ‘counterfeit and third-party ink cartridges’.

The firm’s spokesman added: ‘When ink cartridges are cloned or counterfeited, the customer is exposed to quality and potential security risks.’

‘Potential security risks’