I’ll start: printers.
I bought an HP in March 2020 when my job went remote and HP bricked it remotely after only 100 pages because I wouldn’t sign up for their subscription program. Ended up trashing a perfectly good printer.
Luckily my library’s close by and I can print there remotely.
The scenario you described will still be an insane anti-consumer scam if it was true. The real scam is worse, but how can you be OK with what you described is already insane.
I just don’t recommend doing subscriptions. I don’t really recommend HP either. I prefer brother printers, but they all suck. And again, it’s really not a scam. It’s a way for people that print a lot to save money. I don’t understand how people don’t understand the basics of these types of programs. But hey, you get angry all you want. It’s no skin off my back, and I refuse to service home users anyways, because it’s a pain in the ass regardless what tech they own.
It’s not a scam in a sense that the rules are kinda explained. It’s a scammy behaviour by a scammy company however.