I occasionally need to print something, and based on the reviews in rtings.com, a HP OfficeJet Pro 9013 was probably my best bet for performance/price (given the top choice is not available anywhere in my region – Europe/Sweden). Researching showed some shady business practice by HP for their inkjet printers, but against my best judgement, I decided to try my luck.

My mistake.

The printer worked fine for a while. Nothing particularly good or bad about it. It prints, it scans, it fits what I need. I bought it new at a reasonable price, and got 3 years commercial warranty which seems like a good deal.

But the honeymoon does not last long.

The yellow cartridge went out first. It does not let me print even black and white document.

This is crappy business, and I was warned, but OK fine. I signed on for this. So I bough the yellow cartridge to replace the old one. All good? No, this time, it’s cyan that is out of ink.

Even without printing one page.

I am forced to buy cyan. Just to print one page, in black and white.

And then, when cyan cartridge arrives, I replaced the old one, and guess what, magenta is out!

Even without printing one page.

I can’t help but to heavily suspect that HP does that intentionally.

The printer fails to do its job when you need it, sometime sorely. This entirely defeats the convenience of having your own printer at home. I could have just printed it by a service, and be done with it.

I called HP support and told that “the cartridges should be replaced at the same time”, and “just get a new cartridge and it will work”. You can see, that is less than helpful.

This is simply a terrible, terrible practice from HP (and sadly it’s not uncommon in the business)

I learned my lesson – never again.