As far as modern electronics go, printers are pretty cheap.

That’s because they operate on the “razor and blades” economic model (“give away the razor, sell the blades.”)

The machinery itself can be sold pretty much at cost, or even at a loss, because your profit margins are going to come from that insanely overpriced ink.

Trouble is, there are plenty of third party companies out there willing to package up that same ink and sell it for some more reasonable price, undercutting you and removing a lot of your profit.

So if you’re, say, HP, what do you do about that? Reassess your pricing structure? Focus on making better products?

Nah. Just make up a bunch of rules that make your customers hate you. Like in this video TikTok user @hunterlollo:

“This is my final straw. My final straw in capitalism.”

“So the printer that I bought with money, and the paper that I supply with it, that cost money. The ink that I supply it with cost money in the house that I have to plug it into, the WiFi that I use to connect it to, the phone that I use to print said things to, that all cost money.”

“I can’t use the printer unless I have a subscription to it. You have to have a subscription to said printer to use the printer that I already bought with money. Ah, I know. Life is just a bunch of subscriptions at this point. We subscribe to the air that we breathe. But a printer? $5 a month. $5 a month to print things that I already bought the printer. Already bought printer. Paid for ink, paid for paper, paid for phone, paid for Wi-Fi, paid for electricity, paid for printer subscription.”

“My last straw. This is it.”

@hunterlollo

My last shred of sanity is gone. Everything is a subscription #subscription #fyp #foryou #printer

♬ original sound – Hunter

It’s true – HP has been sneaking in little subscription programs can lock in unwitting customers for up to two years and include LIMITS ON HOW MUCH YOU CAN PRINT ON THE PRINTER YOU OWN as well as regular deliveries of their, again, extremely overpriced ink.

It capitalist America, printer uses you!

It’s truly nuts.

And then of course you just get errors all day.

The good news is that HP seems to have finally realized that this horrid business plan is just driving customers to their competitors, and is phasing these subscriptions out.

Still, at this point, I wouldn’t trust ’em.

If you liked that story, check out this video about a mom who reveals the inappropriate healthcare questionnaire her 13-year-old daughter got at school.