To:

Mark Hurd
Chairman of the Board, Chief Executive Officer and President
Hewlett-Packard Company

Just a quick note to let you know why you are losing me forever as an HP customer.

I own the HP Office Jet Pro L7590.  I did not realize until today that it has the following stealth “feature”:  The printer provides no ability to override use of the color ink cartridges to print in strictly black and white.

This is perhaps the stupidist product feature I have ever seen.  It clearly exists just to force me to have to buy more overpriced ink cartridges.

I am about to get on a plane, and I need to print out a several page Microsoft Word document.  It’s COMPLETELY black.  No yellow in sight.  But because my yellow cartridge is empty, the printer refuses to work. 

I do not have a car.  I do not have the time to make it to the nearest store which carries your overpriced ink cartridges.  Therefore, even though I HAVE LOADS OF BLACK INK IN MY BLACK INK CARTRIDGE, I cannot print this TOTALLY BLACK DOCUMENT.

There should have been a big warning (in YELLOW, perhaps!) on the box of this printer when I was purchasing it.  “WARNING!  BUY LOTS OF EXPENSIVE YELLOW INK CARTRIDGES SO YOU’LL BE ABLE TO PRINT YOUR BLACK AND WHITE DOCUMENTS!!”  You should be embarrassed to foist such ludicrously gimped products onto the public.

I have bought nothing but HP printers for my business for the last twelve years.  That policy ends today.