HP ENVY 6055e Wireless Color Inkjet Printer

This is a review of HP’s approach to this printer. First the light that stays on on the printer. The picture of this product is very deceptive; it does not show just how bright that blue-ish light really is and stays on 24/7/365. If you keep this printer in your room, that light will illuminate almost the entire room at night and the wavelength of the blue light is such that it keeps you from sleeping. Give me one good reason why there is an obnoxiously bright light on a printer that stays on 24/7. Why do I need a loud and bright reminder that the printer is “ready” 24/7? Thats what plugging it in is supposed to do. There is NO way to turn off the extremely bright light. Its almost as though the printer makers want to control your life by being obnoxiously present and having an annoyingly loud way of reminding you day and night that such inconsequential thing as a printer is now this huge thing in your life. There is no way to turn off this light. Plenty of other ways to serve the purpose of the light without having that light on. Honestly, it feels like a Big Brother situation. They have this thing on their app where they remotely monitor your printer and they claim its for your “security.” Personal printer security? Security from what? So does that mean that HP is getting a copy of EVERY page you print sent to them? This is a reasonable suspicion given that they can remotely monitor how many pages you print, so it makes sense that they have access to the CONTENT of those pages too. Its feels extremely uncomfortable to me how corporate America continues to increasingly invade our personal lives, take away our rights and privacy, even more than governments do. The second issue is the printer ink subscription. The terms and nature of the subscription are manipulative. I actually read the fine print. The fine print conveniently leaves certain crucial information out such as when it says that you “may” need to return the ink if you unsubscribe and they will remotely disable whatever ink you already have. They then promptly send you the first ink long before you existing ink is low so as to mentally tie you down during that “free” subscription period. Now the ink subscription is NOT just an ink subscription; it is also a page subscription where you are basically charged if you print more pages than your subscription level. So now, you have HP invading your mind by making you always conscious of how many pages you print, taking away that mental freedom to print as many or as little as you like. Oh and they conveniently omit from the fine print how much EXACTLY you would be charged for each page overage; they merely say that you “may” be charged overages for printing more pages than your subscription level. Is it $1/page? $5/page? $500/page? It doesn’t say. How much per page? What limit? None of that is addressed int he fine print that comes with the printer. This is a TRAP that HP sets for their unsuspecting victims whereby the ink plan that is so overtly advertised as saving you up to 50% in ink costs could easily cost several times more than one would have paid without this exploitative ink subscription. One oversight or one month of heavier-than-usual printing is all it takes; consumers have many other things to worry about in their lives so may not always keep track of exactly how much they are printing and so if one stays with the plan long enough, they may inevitably trigger the overage charges which could wipe out all savings up to that point and then some. And of course there is a maximum page subscription level so there is always a chance of overage even at the highest level of subscription. I imagine, as is typical of Corporate America, that if one were to call HP when they suddenly see a huge charge on their credit card that they are not expecting, HP would simply use that opportunity to get them to subscribe to higher plans, thus essentially blackmailing them into spending more. This is theft, plain and simple; just that it is disguised as a “subscription plan.” Oh, what they get away with! Why be this deceptive? Why not show on the product picture the true image of what the printer ACTUALLY looks like when it is plugged in? Why effectively eliminate the light from the picture when in fact it is the most noticeable and most obnoxiously loud and present aspect of the printer by design? Why abuse Americans/customers with exploitative subscription plans? Why invade the sanctity of our privacy? Unfortunately as technology has become more sophisticated, this has been the trend throughout both with HP and other companies providing these technologies and services. These companies are competing with one another for a share of the consumer’s privacy and attention and in that stampede of competition, the consumer is the victim and collateral damage that gets stumped down in the mud at every turn. I am saddened by the direction of such practices. And I am just tired of companies like HP abusing and taking advantage of people like this. Someone has to stand up and say something. This is NOT an inevitable trend; these companies need to be held accountable for their corrupt practices and have these trends reversed. Human life is supposed to get better with technological improvements; we should not have to pay for these advancements with our very own freedom.