But buying a second printer would make my current 2yr investment a waste so savings would be a wash.

Also I do need color sometimes making the HP the better value until they start charging more for color.

Definitely will consider it when this printer dies though.

I choose to use Instant Ink because I don’t print a lot and it still beats buying the carts. HP ships them to me for free and automatically before I run out and gives me return postage for the empties to be recycled.

They also don’t have different rates for B/W and Color so I just print everything in color.

I dont stress over $1/mo (or $1.50/mo if this increase hits me). I’ve had this printer for 2yrs on the cheapest plan and I’ve still not paid the full price of a set of cartridges.

I’m sure I’ll be down votes for saying anything positive about the program but whatever. It works fine for me.

Of course they disable the cartridge. You’re paying for ink on a subscription. If you didn’t pay for cart in full, why should you be able to use the rest of it? That’s literally what you signed up for. Otherwise everyone would get a full cartridge for $1.

If you don’t want to do ink-cart-layaway, don’t sign up and buy the cartridge.

Disabling mid-month is a scam though.