While it’s not my intention to save the buying public from the myriad of scams that permeate our everyday lives in the 21st century, you may find this information a cautionary tale and useful.
I drank the Kool-Aid and signed up for the “pay us whether you use your printer or not” deal where you pay each month and try to stay under the allotted number of prints. But after a year or so it was obvious I was overpaying and canceled my subscription. The next time I went to the computer and found it not hooked to Wifi (which was why I recently purchased a new and better printer), I did get it up and running with an old cord attached directly to my computer and it worked. …worked as in it responded, but responded with a notice that my ink had been shut off. Shut off! As in there are chips in the cartridges that they control.
OK, so what. But then more cartridges arrived, three weeks late, and I was charged for them. However, they turned them off as well. I got two prints, apparently their bots found that I was using my printer again, and they turned off two brand new cartridges that they sent after I cancelled and charged me for them.
I looked this up on the Internet and there is a ton of complaints about their intrusive, and what I believe are illegal, policies, most especially how they remove money from your account and then render the object of the charge useless.
So I’ll go to my AE account and they will return my measly $7 because they are honest, understanding, and customer centric which is why I’ve lived off their card since 1984. And there is the point of this post. There are good companies and there are really bad companies. The Internet is the best place to find out which is which. Before you sign up for any company, do your homework and find out about a company’s culture, especially subscription services and then decide for yourself.