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HP Must Defend Half-Empty "Economy" Ink Cartridges
An Anonymous Coward excerpts this short Detroit News story, which begins "PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Hewlett-Packard Co. must defend the sale of half-full ink cartridges with its printers after a Minnesota appellate court reinstated a lawsuit against the world's largest maker of printers.
Three Minnesota women claim that the company doesn't reveal that the 'economy cartridges' installed on new printers are only half full of ink." The cost of refills is why I've given up on inkjet printers entirely (for now) -- guess which division of HP made more money than the other four combined?
99% of the stuff you're printing is going to be black and white anyway, so why not fork out the extra $100 or so and get a budget laserprinter? Considering ink cartridges cost, what, about $50 these days anyway, you'll find the laser option more affordable in the long run.
"Why did they cancel my favorite Sci-Fi show? I downloaded ALL the episodes!"
Cost of new black ink cartridge for my printer: $40
Cost of laser printer with toner on eBay: $50
Maybe they should just sell disposable printers instead.
--Kevin
guess which division of HP made more money than the other four combined?
Compaq?
See, some people only see the negative. I see the ink cartritge as half full.
If you look at the cart. it lists the amount of ink.. in Canada it is marked in ml. If you have one of the Office class printers the black cartrige costs about $50 and contain about 40ml of ink If you hav one of the cheap sub $100 printers it still costs about $50 for the cart but it only contains about 20ml of ink.. Its clearly marked on the cart and on the box.. I ALWAYS check how much ink is in the cart before deciding on wich printer I get. By the way the Canon BCI-21 Black contains only about 5 - 10 ml of ink.
EA David Gardner -"... but the consumers have proven that actually what they want is fun."
HP Must Defend Half-Empty "Economy" Ink Cartidges
Apparently. These "cartidges" also seem to have half as many R's.
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
Come on, be fair. Deceptive packaging is just that - packaging designed to give a false impression. People who bought based on this false impression have been defrauded. The cartridges are not "economy", as they are falsely represented.
Companies have been doing this with laser printers too - the first toner cartridge is less than half full, always.
Mind you, this reminds me of the ongoing fight I'm having with a coffee maker who sold me 2 12-cup coffee makers that make only 6 8-ounce cups. Nothing in the fine print, nothing in the packaging, nothing in the manual.
We'll see who blinks first - or whether I'm going to have to take them to small claims court.
The whole ink jet printer industry reminds me of the razor/blade industry. They sell you the printer cheap, then screw you hard for the inks making sure you run out fast on the first set of cartridges just like the razor folks only give you one or two "starter" blades. But then again, Carly didn't put a gun to my head and forced me to buy the printer. It works well but is expensive to operate in the long run.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
One problem with laser is that it spikes the hell out of your power supply, will kill a UPS, and if not on aseperate circuit can wreak havoc with your other equipment. Inkjets are much tamer, and while a pain in the ass and slower, are safer for beginning/home lUsers for this reason. Since they're also cheaper to make than lasers and better than dot-matrix, inkjet will probably have a lock on consumers for some time.
You are not the customer.
I use alot of large format plotters. Right now regarding inkjet Encad and HP seem to be the favorites. Even bulk ink plotters like HP1050 series requires you to purchase an inktank instead of just pouring in more ink. Encad on the other hand sells jugs of milk that you can pour in on the fly even while printing.
I worked for a company making high end thermal printers and the trick to their sales were to force customers to use their inks and substrate. one by placing wierd punch patterns on the paper then patenting it. ofcourse this was played off as a superior punch pattern for accuracy. funny enough when the pattent ran out they left the patter behind. Secondly they constantly changed the firing patterns on the head of the printer so other films wouldn't work or last as long. When customers called up who used other products it was standard to blaim the non brand name film or substrate. It's no secrets companies strong arm customers into buying their peripherals and materials at a higher cost.
This study is a pretty amusing look into exactly how much each page of inkjet-ed printing costs you.
but I do not think of HP as a sleazeball company. They make high quality products for fair prices, treat their employees reasonably well, and you never hear about Chinese 6-year-olds assembling LJ4100's in a sweatshop someplace.
So, why are they pulling this scam? Is it a change in corporate culture? Is HP actually evil, with a thin chocolaty covering? Is it actually a fair tactic? Is it a manufacturing or shipping issue?
Insight please...
The joys and savings of cost of a dot-matrix. Not to mention the fact that there are pages out there designed specifically to create music while you print (for the speakerless/soundcardless of us out there).
Lemure, wtf! Don't you mean Lemur?
The ability to print nice color CDROM labels, plus the ability to print photos on demand, makes an inkjet the only way to go for me.
Yes, it costs $40 or so for a pair of new cartridges for my Epson. But I only ever bought one pair, then I refill them. It takes about 10 minutes and costs about $3 to fill both of them.
Before I buy a new inkjet, I check the online refill suppliers and make sure that they're reasonably easy to refill. I just don't buy printers that are not easy to refill.
I made an exception for the Epson 870 photo printer, but only after someone figured out how to refill it at all (originally it was not possible, but someone figured out how to cheat). It was good enough to put up with a little bit of hassle in filling the carts (it still only takes about 10 minutes)
The new carts for this printer are about $20 each. However, for $50 I bought enough ink to refill them dozens of times. Just be sure to get a specific formulation for your printer, not one of these Wal-Mart "universal" ink refilling kits.
To dispel some myths before they come up:
I have been refilling for 3 years now, both HP and Epson, probably 30 to 40 cartridge refills, and NOT ONE INSTANCE of a clogged head or anything.
Some people say the ink quality isn't the same. They're right; the aftermarket stuff is BETTER. I have a few dozen photos hanging on the wall behind me printed on the Epson 870. They have all faded in the sunlight a bit, but the ones printed with original Epson ink have faded A LOT more. Another complaint is possible color inaccuracies. I don't know, they look OK to me but I don't have "pantone eyes."
Also, they can't "void your warranty" for using aftermarket inks. Requiring people to buy their ink products for their printers is called "product tying" and is AFAIK an illegal monopolistic practice.
http://www.inksupply.com/index.cfm?source=html/cf
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
Buy an Epson instead of an HP, and the cartridge won't wear out, either. The Epson heads are separate and designed to last. The HP is integral and designed to fail.
It's because HP patented their ink-jet cartridge designs. Therefore, unless HP licenses the patent, you won't see any other companies producing them, and HP can charge what they want for them. With printers like Epson's, the ink cartridge is just a tank for the ink, rather than having the print head built into the cartridge like HP's, so you see third-party ink tanks; I buy mine (Epson 980) for ~$7 for black and ~$9 for color (with discounts for buying three or more at a time).
On the other hand, as long as you don't let the cartridge run dry (which will damage the print head), you can refill HP cartridges about a half-dozen times before the print head wears enough to be noticeable. The same place I get replacement Epson tanks from also sells refill kits; a refill kit for the HP 700-1300 series cartridges runs ~$30 and has 2oz each of cyan, magenta, and yellow (enough for 3, 6, or 12 refills, depending on which size color cartridge you're using) and 4oz of black (enough for 3, 5, or 6 refills, depending on which size black cartridge you're using). The same quantity of ink for refilling tanks for my Epson 980 is about $6 cheaper (4 black, 3 color refills), because HP uses pigmented black ink, which is more expensive than the dye-based black ink the Epson printers use.
So you can run the cost of operation down, as long as you're willing to make the effort to load more ink into your existing cartridges.
Remove the cheap solvent, and, by weight, inkjet ink is more expensive than gold.
I just want to know if any of you have come across this scam:
(I have seen this happen 3 times in my career in IT)
You get a call from some one, they find out that you are in charge of purchasing for you IT dept in your co. They tell you that they are going to send you your free gift! a small tv or some such thing. If you accept this gift - they send you a pallat (sp?) of laser printer toner cartridges and try to charge you like $200.00 each.
They bill you and try to send you an invoice at some regular interval.
When I first got into IT I mistakenly accepted the seemingly innocent free gift from a vendor and had this happen. They had told me that they were an authorized HP cartridge re-manufacturer, and that the toner cartridges containg high quality super fine toner which yeilded over a thousand more pages per cartridge (no - I did not fall for this BS as i will explain) - they continued on the superiority of their re-furbished crap... I was very wise/lucky to basically record the conversation in transcript form in notepad....
I told them I did not want to buy any of their cartridges - but sure I would accept the free gift that they wanted to send me regardles... big mistake. They sent the free gift all right - right along with half a pallet of the toner cartridges i didnt want.
So I accepted the gift, but refused delivery of the pallet. but the delivery guy was apparently giving instructions not to take no for an answer and would not accept the refusal of delivery. and left me with the pallet - and the invoice for a few thousand dollars.
I was pissed off... luckily I had the entire ordeal meticulously documented... for some reason I felt the whole thing was fishy and kept very good notes.
being that the company said that they were one of the few nationally certified and autorized HP cartridge manufacturers - and that the delivery of the toner carts was total BS - and that they were charging over 200 per toner I was pissed off.
I called up HP and asked about their authorizing such shady companies - I was informed by HP that there was nbo such thing as an auth'd cartridge remanufacturer... and they forwarded me to their legal dept. I talked with them about the whole thing... emailed the transcripts of the whole ordeal - and they sent someone next day to pick up the pallet of illegal cartridges (but said I could keep two or three for my troubles)\
Then since we never paid the invoice to the con company - they called up demanding their money. I told them that I would be happy to pay them - if they could prove that they were authorized HP remanufacturers (I dont remember exactly why - but HP said that I should not tell them that I had reported them until they gave me the go ahead... they said to give them the run around on the invoice for a few weeks - and they would contact me and tell me when they had completed their investigation)
they called every single day trying to get payment out of us. Then they sent us another pallet of toner carts - that HP galdly picked up again the next day.
Finally I had the pleasure of telling the guys on the other end of the line that I ahd documented every last detail - including them verifying their mailing address 3 times for payment of the invoice and had reported them to HP and the BBB and the state attorney general for fraud. You should have heard the guy on the other end - he went stark raving mad into a panic - especially after I was able to document exact conversations and every single time they called me.
They claimed that what I did was illegal and that I should be prepared to be sued "big time" by them. They never called me again....
But ! some others tried to get in on the game a few years later. I received calls where they said "Hi, sam - we would like to send you your free gift!" I would ask them what company they were from, get them to repeat and verify their company name a few times - then laugh and tell them I knew their scam and that I was calling the Ca state attorney general - they would promptly hang up.
Anyone else seen this scam before?
I have an HP and tend to print most of my documents in draft mode. For most intents and purposes, especially for text documents, it is is perfectly sufficient. Since the print head seems to pass twice for high quality, I would guess that I am on average doubling the life of my ink cartridge. If I need something to dazzle then the high quality mode is there when I need it.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.