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?

Comments

Why do people bother with inkjets?

[ringbarer]

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.

Re:Why do people bother with inkjets?

[bravehamster]

Actually, about 60% of the stuff I print is in color, i.e. my digital photos. Altered, of course, to show my fabulous vacation with Heidi Klum. You can see my need for full vibrant colors.

Re:Why do people bother with inkjets?

[eyeball]

99% of the stuff you're printing is going to be black and white anyway, so why not...

Wow, how did you know exactly how much I print on black and white and how much I print in color? Wait, are you spying on me? Oh, I know, you must be Bill Gates, since Windows must be monitoring how much color data gets sent to my printer port so they can sell that marketing data to vendors like HP.

Seriously, I always said "Oh, I'll never print anything out in color," then I actually got an inkjet printer, and now at least 50% of the pages I print are in color. They aren't just pages with color I could turn off and do without, either. I print things like maps, signs, photos (granted not archival quality, but good enough to send pics of my cats to family members), etc..

Re:Why do people bother with inkjets?

[scott1853]

Samsung? NO! We got one at the office.

It's manual feed tray is left aligned and then everything that you try to print on paper smaller than 8.5x11 will try to be centered where it would be on regular letter sized paper.

Also, in the time it takes it to warm up, I can send a print job to the HP downstairs and walk down and get it before the Samsung has even started.

You don't want these things next to you when you're talking on the phone either. Imagine the volume level of a dot matrix without the rat-a-tat-tat but with a continuous humming.

Just my personal experience though.

Re:Why do people bother with inkjets?

[SomeoneGotMyNick]

My nearly perfect sequence for a worry-free refill on an HP cartridge for an 800 series printer.

1. Act immediately - When it's running out of ink, you have better luck refilling it before the ink dries in the nozzles
   
2. Use only the suggested amount of ink recommended by the refill kit. Don't top-off and suck back a bit of ink to make a cartridge full.
   
3. When done, squeeze sides slightly while closing off fill hole. Another reason why you don't fill to the brim.
   
4. Let the printhead fully sit on blotting paper for 5-10 minutes (prop up cartridge with some loose change)
   
5. Carefully wipe clean the printhead and insert in printer. Do full print tests, cleaning, and alignment.
   

I say 'nearly-perfect' because I found that sometimes, I needed to do a little more blotting before everything is perfect.

Price comparison

[kpansky]

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.

Made more money?

[SpamJunkie]

guess which division of HP made more money than the other four combined?

Compaq?

Pessimists

[finny]

See, some people only see the negative. I see the ink cartritge as half full.

Re:Pessimists

[Dr Caleb]

Others, pragmatists such as myself, would say the cartridge is too big.

Economical on Slashdot too

[Skevin]

HP Must Defend Half-Empty "Economy" Ink Cartidges

Apparently. These "cartidges" also seem to have half as many R's.

Inkjets have a hold on the consumer market

[Limburgher]

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.

Re:Inkjets have a hold on the consumer market

[drinkypoo]

Unless we're talking about a UPS the size of a dorm fridge, you're not going to want to plug it into a UPS anyway. UPSes are for saving your work when the power goes out, not for running from in the case of a power failure. That's what generators are for. A lot of people make this mistake, but a UPS is just not a cost-effective system for running when the power is out - It's just to hold you until a generator spins up.

Before you start ranting about the cost of a generator system, consider that a good-sized UPS costs a great deal of money. It will cost you about $500-$600 to get a 5 kilowatt generator with automatic cutover (That's over 10 hours of runtime at 50% load, per five gallons of gasoline) which can run things like your lighting as well, not just a PC and a laser printer.

Meanwhile, a 3kvA UPS is around $1500 and up. Sure you don'ty have to buy gas for it, but you do have to buy batteries eventually, and good ones aren't cheap.

Anyway, you can always resubmit a print job. Just put your laser printer on a good surge suppressor. If you need to run when the power is out, invest in a generator system. It doesn't cost as much as you might think and it will run for hours, not just minutes.

Re:Smart folks refill their own cartridges...

[jridley]

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.

more expensive than gold

[Futurepower(R)]

Remove the cheap solvent, and, by weight, inkjet ink is more expensive than gold.

Wanna know....

[_ph1ux_]

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?