Ink Cartridges with Built-In Self-Destruct Dates

Linker3000 writes "The Inquirer has an article about HP ink cartridges having a built-in expiry date that can cause them to become unusable even if they aren't empty! Another twist on the 'chipped cartridge' stories--and also another kick in the teeth (and wallet) for the consumer methinks." This isn't really a new problem - here's a good piece about the problem.

Comments

All these fancy ink and 'laser' printers

[Lord Fren]

I don't have this problem, I'm still using a dot matrix from 1993! I have only replaced the ribbon once, and it still prints. (really light and grey/bluish)

It's a free market.

[Moderation abuser]

If you don't like it, buy someone else's product.

Re:It's a free market.

[rf0]

Problem is that once a company like HP sets a presidence like this others will think they can follow. These leave the cheaper refill type cartridges or 3rd party both of which invalidate your warranty. However TBH after 2 years you warranty will most likely of expiered anyway

Rus

Re:It's a free market.

[chamenos]

the problem is that if having printer ink cartridges that self-destruct after a certain amount of time becomes the status quo, then pretty much -all- printer manufacturers are going to follow suit and consumers won't be left with any more choices.

in an ideal world, consumers would vote with their wallet and such manufacturers would have to change their practices. however in reality, the large majority of consumers are not well-informed, hence they make wrong choices that ultimately put everyone at a disadvantage. to be brutally honest i think this would be rather inevitable, given the general knowledge the average joe or jane has about computers and its related peripheral devices. the manufacturers probably know this, and are likely to prefer to keep it the way it is.

Re:It's a free market.

[Copperhead]

Perhaps you're trolling, but it might help if you offer some suggestions. What printer manufacturers don't use this business model? I would be perfectly willing to purchase from a manufacturer from the light side, if I knew who they were.

Any ideas?

Re:It's a free market.

[chamenos]

true, but they apparently think they're invulnerable. besides, the EU still won't have any judicial power over the manufacturers' operations in other regions of the world.

in my opinion, this whole fiasco started due to bad foresight by a bunch of marketing guys. they tried to emulate the shaver business model, but failed to realize that brand recognition is not as important in the computer industry; people in general would be more willing to pay less for an X-brand printer cartrige that works almost as well as the original, but wouldn't be as willing to buy a Y-brand replacement razor for a shaver that might nick your skin when you shave due to poorer QC that manifests itself in more obvious and painful ways.

now that they've set the standard for ridiculously low prices for printers, they realize their share of the profits of the ink cartridge business isn't as large as they anticipated it to be due to third-party manufacturers. unfortunately, they can't raise the prices of printers to the level they were once at to make up for this loss, since consumers would certainly cry foul and instead rely on older printers that are not fussy about ink cartridges. they've got themselves stuck in a rut, and they have only themselves to blame for it.

now they've even implemented self-destructing ink cartridges....sheesh. i don't forsee this going very far.

Re:It's a free market.

[lpontiac]

They will only follow if morons continue to buy their products.

And herein lies the problem. The "free market" is an economic model that makes many assumptions. In a "free market" the theoretical consumers make rational decisions all the time, and are perfectly informed.

The fact that morons exist and are consumers is one of the uncountably large number of reasons that a pure free market will never exist in the real world, and therefore we can't magically expect the market's "invisible hand" to make things work well.

Re:It's a free market.

[vsprintf]

They're playing with fire if they do that; printer manufacturers are already under investigation for anticompetitive practices by the EU. If they have any sense, they'll back off fast.

Do you really think Carly cares about your silly rules? She is busy adding HP to her list of dying companies. As long as that rigged cartridge adds a nickel to her bonus, that's the way it will be.

Thanks Co^&aq

[Bronster]

Cheers for taking the company that used to create those really good laser printers and turning them into another crap marketing company, just like you did to Digital.

Why is it that mergers seem to take the worst bits of both companies?

Re:Thanks Co^&aq

[Goody]

Cheers for taking the company that used to create those really good laser printers and turning them into another crap marketing company, just like you did to Digital.

Compaq didn't turn HP into a crap company, it was merely the final step in a multi-year process. Things went to hell the day HP made printers a priority over the good quality innovative test equipment they built the 50 years before.

HP, do you want to spend the rest of your life selling colored ink ?

Re:Congratulations!

[DirkDaring]

What about those that let their ink sit in their printer for years and don't care about quality? Or those that put in a cartridge that been in storage for years and the print quality is just fine?

Time To Expiration

[Anonymous Coward]

The article says that the expiration date is 4 1/2 years after the cartridge is put into the printer. Surely, more than 99.9% of users will run out of ink well before the expiration date.

Re:Time To Expiration

[mirko]

Nope, last week, I actually replaced a 7 year old cartridge from my HPDeskjet 510 (bought in Nov1993) : I don't print that often but I expect it to be possible at any moment.
HP has sold me a printer for the last time, next one will be another brand... unless I find printer refills for my old ink cartridges.

Re:Time To Expiration

[fyonn]

While this may be a nuisance for a very tiny number of people the timeframes seem reasonable to me. If you have a printer sitting with a single cartridge for more than 2 years you really dont need a printer.

it seems reasonable for a printer compny to leech mponey from it's customers because they aren't buying enough ink? to add restrictions that were not there before, for no better reaosn than to make more money andmake a fully paid for product useless. if thats not illegal it's at least immoral in my book.

dave

Re:Time To Expiration

[fyonn]

but he's not using it by choice, not by force. I don't currently own a printer. I have no need for one. ubt if were made redundant then I'd prolly go and buy a cheap printer so I could run cv's off. once I'd got a new job then I'd prolly not use the printer too much, perhaps a document here and there, but I'm not a big office user. now 3 years alater I lose my job again, I edit my cv, go to print and it tells me that the cart has expired.

I paid for that cartridge and the ink in it. I know damn well that I've hardly used any and that there is sufficent ink to do the job. I'm printing a cv, not colour pictures of the family so ultimate quality isn;t a huge issue, I just need black print. is it fair/moral for me to be forced into buying another cartridge (which might be more than half the cost of the printer) because HP decided I just wasn't spending enough money with them?

just because I'm not using something currently doesn;t mean I don't have a use for it planned.

it's like saying that having insurance is useless as I'm not claiming on it.

dave

Re:Time To Expiration

[RoLi]

First, it's 4.5 years after manufacturing date or 30 months in the printer whitchever comes first.

That means if a store sells you a 4 year old cartridge, you only have 6 months left.

But that doesn't matter, it's about principles. Where do you draw the line? If 99% of users are unaffected it's OK to purposely breake products? 95%? 90? 80? 60? By your logic, HP could dower these times a bit just for kicks and some morons would still defend their decision.

Purposely breaking products is vandalism. And just because there are not that many affected, doesn't change a thing. HP is not better than somebody trashing public phones, smashing windows or keying cars.

Re:Time To Expiration

[RoLi]

My neighbour doesn't use the house he built there, he just comes by every other week to look after the garden.

Does this give HP the right to burn down his house "because of the fact that its owner is just not using it"?

Timesprout, you are sick. Seriously, you should think about what you are advocating, here.

And I didn't even start to talk about people buying several printer cartridges which of course will be on the shelf quite a while.

Re:Time To Expiration

[hal200]

Not to mention that 3 years later, you may not be able to FIND a cartridge for your printer anymore. If they've EOL'd the printer and don't make that particular cartidge anymore, you're SOL. (HP is pretty good about re-using cartridge designs, but there are others...Epson, I'm looking at YOU!) There is a company in Toronto (sorry, I don't recall the name) whose whole purpose in life is stocking obsolete toner/ink catridges and selling them to ppl/businesses who don't want to upgrade simply because their printer is considered obsolete. Imagine what this will do to them?

On the subject of printers, I'd never buy another Epson. Picked up a Stylus C42UX for my girlfriend and I to do assignments in university. At $70 (Canadian) for the printer, it was an awesome deal for us as students. (read: poor) Unfortunately, the cartridges cost $25-30 for the black and about $40 for the colour. The black cartridge prints about 100-150 sheets of text. The kicker is that if the printer monitors the ink levels, and if it's out of any given colour (C, M, Y or K) it refuses to print. So, if I'm out of yellow ink and I want to print a black and white document, I'm SOL until I go out and pick up a new colour cartridge for almost 60% of the purchase price of the printer.

As the final nail in the coffin, just to make sure you don't go and do something sneaky like buy a new printer every time you're out of ink, they put half-filled "preview" ink cartridges in their new printers, so after 50 pages or so, you're sunk again. Every time I think about it too much I get the near uncontrollable urge to take the damned thing out back, and go Office Space on it with a baseball bat, then mail the pieces back to Epson. I doubt it would do any good, but it would make me feel better about the whole deal. :)

It's sad too, because back in the day, Epson and HP both used to be reputable printer dealers who cared about their products and their customers. (But that's another rant that I'll save that rant for a journal entry sometime...one post, one rant maximum. ;)

Re:Time To Expiration

[Moofie]

Speaking of bullshit analogies...

HP's cartridges still have ink in them. The ink worked satisfactorily yesterday, but today I can't use it because HP has decided that it's "expired". There is no physical reason that the cartridge shouldn't be working just fine: The ink is still there, and while it's not the "freshest", it still makes the marks on the page well enough.

Designing a product to wear out in a specified amount of time is done all the time, although I think it's reprehensible. However, ENFORCING that planned obsolesence by an artificial date-stamp is appalling.

I mean, should Sony get to come break my stereo because they decided it only is supposed to work for five years?

whats the big deal

[kaltekar]

so you get 4 and a half years to use the cartidge after you buy the thing. if the ink hasn't dryed up by the time you get around to using it, the quality is going to be shit. expecally with those ultra high end ink jets from hp where you continually expect outstanding quality.

Re:whats the big deal

[hendridm]

> if the ink hasn't dryed up by the time you get around to using it, the quality is going to be shit.

What, do you work for HP? So HP is looking after my best interest to make sure my documents always look their best. How nice of them. Perhaps they should cut the expiration date in half just in case...

Pffft. I'LL be the judge of when my cartridge is due to be replaced. If your goal is to truely make sure your customer's prints are quality, how about innovation instead of limitation. Try to figure out a way to make the carts last longer. If your printers have the reputation of "lasting forever", I gaurentee your sales will go up.

This Has To Be Stopped

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks to the DMCA, we are powerless to do anything to
prevent this. A vendor can't sell after-market printer
ink cartridges for some products as they would be in
violation of the DMCA -- hence restraint of free trade,
not the original intent of the DMCA. This only serves
to keep prices higher and harms consumers, again not
the intent of the DMCA.

Can you purchase after-market products, new seats,
new engines, new spark plugs, new oil and gas for
your car? Imagine if GM did the following:

• Built a car with major components on the car area
  network, all using encryption (seats, radio, engine)
  
• Had a computer that would not allow
  the car to start unless you had all the original parts
  
• Enforced the DMCA so you could only buy replacement
  parts from them
  
• Sued all the after marketers for engine parts (no souped
  up engines, no customized or replacement seats,
  no super stereo).
  

What's to prevent them from doing that?

Re:This Has To Be Stopped

[zelbinion]

Er, no.

The DMCA might prevent you from taking an HP cartridge and reprogramming it so that it no longer thinks it is "expired." This would let you put brand X ink in the thing, and when brand X ink ruins the printer (that ink is corrosive, by the way) you sent the hole mess back to HP and demand a replacement or repair at HP's expense. That's a terrific business plan if you make brand X ink -- you don't have to do worry about how well your ink works in the printer because if anything goes wrong, people blame HP.

However, there is NOTHING (other than perhaps patent law, but don't get me started there) to prevent another company from reverse-engineering the printer and designing their own cartridge that has their own expiration date encoded on the thing.

The fact is, no one does this because it costs too much money in R&D to design a cartidge that can sit on the shelf for years and with corrosive ink inside that is designed to dry quickly on paper and yet not dry up inside the cartidge. (yada yada yada, read the second article)

It is simply a whole lot easier (and cheaper) to sell refil kits with crap ink and let someone else take the blame (and pay the expense) when it fails. HP is just protecting themselves (and their profits.) (Though they could have been more up-front about it.)

It may even be legal to replace the little chip on the cartridge. However, just like if you put aftermarket parts on your car, don't expect the original manufacturer to repair or replace it under warrenty when it fails.

No surprises, please

[slashd'oh]

No customer likes surprises, especially after they purchased a high-end product. If HP or another manufacturer implements a policy such as this one, there should be full disclosure so at least people are aware of it. Plus, HP has the resources to research not only the financial aspects of such a plan, but also the impact on customer loyalty, etc.

On a different note, I'd like to see a mechanism put in place to allow customers to "re-charge" their current cartridges - like a photocopier card - rather than sending them to the landfill only to be replaced by the exact same product.

Cannon

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought a Cannon inkjet recently precisely because they don't screw me for refills. There are no chips, prices for official cartridges are reasonable, and there is a large selection of 3rd party inks. Better yet there is one refill per colour so if I run out of cyan, I don't have to throw out my magenta, yellow or black.

Of course, the printers are a bit more, but if you're doing a lot of printing, they're cheaper in the long run.

It's not a free market

[AtariAmarok]

It is not a free market, thanks to the DMCA. Without the DMCA, we'd have the freedom to hack and bypass these limits.

You're missing the point, bright eyes

[Anonymous Coward]

This means that you effectively can't refill these ink cartridges.

This points out the classic battle between free beer and free speech. Well, maybe it doesn't. But it still sucks.

batteries have expiration functions why not ink?

[emptybody]

Expensive arrays from compaq and Sun have batteries that "expire" after two years. Wether or not they should. The batteries are cache batteries and once they hit the date they send alarms constantly. Do they really need changing? do you want to take a chance?
As always, YMMV.

Re:The Gillette Business Model.

[CashCarSTAR]

I always thought the "Razor model" analogy was a bad one. Why? The real engineering and difficulty in the production of razors is in the blade. The handle? Just some cheap plastic and rubber really. With most other things, that this analogy comes in, the more expensive part of it is the originial product, not the refills.

Slight nit-pick I guess, but it has always bothered me.

Bad comparison

[BoomerSooner]

The cost of a ink cartridge is 90%+ of the cost of owning and maintaining a inkjet printer. The battery in an array from sun/compaq is much less than 1% of the cost.

Plus my bet is you'd put up with the cost of replacing cache batteries instead of losing whatever the battery is there to protect (transactions and such).

Cartridge Keyed to initializing printer?

[nurb432]

Will the cartridge also be tied to the printer you initialized it in as well, or could you at least move it to another printer.. As long as your 30 day printing allocation hadn't been exceeded..

For home users this will be totally nuts.. cartridges may last 6 months at home..

That is still a free market

[Anonymous Coward]

If morons make the wrong decisions, it is still a free market. That does not change it one bit. Other factors can make it less free, but individuals making dumb decisions is not one of these factors.

'Razor Blades, Not Razors' Model

[codefool]

As the (former) SW OEM account liason (for a computer company that is now HP) to (a printer company that used to be IBM), I learned quite a bit on this subject.

First, printers and particularly inkjet printers, follow the Gillette 'sell razor blades, not razors' marketing model. They practicaly give you the printer as an ink burner. So they do all kinds of nifty stuff to make sure you have things to burn ink on, and you keep running down to CompUSA to plop down another $50 on an ink cartridge. The printer also comes with lots of nifty printing software to give you reasons to burn ink.

In our printers, the cartridge was intelligent, and would keep count (yes, the cartridge did) of the number of individual dots of ink for each color of ink emitted. Knowing the average dot capacity of the cartridge (for each color), we could predict when the cartridge was running low and (kindly) tell the user to go buy another cartridge, and would even provide a handy hyperlink to our online store. Better, we would track the printer's average dots/page and page/day statistics to tell them they had x days of printing left. Buy now!

So this comes to me as no surprise that they have put an expiration date on the printer cartridge. They will due it under the guise that its ensuring 'fresh ink supply' and to ensure 'highest quality printing'. But, in reality, its only another means to force the customer into buying yet more ink. Cha-ching!

My advice, shitcan the inkjet printer, go buy a good laser printer. The total cost-of-ownership is much less in the long run.

p.s. - giving the inkjet away is evil and rude and only perpetuates the problem.

Re:The Gillette Business Model.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's closer than you think. At least for the HP-style cartridges, the print head and ink are in the same cartridge... and the print head is probably where most of the newest engineering goes. The technology of moving the carriage assembly back and forth has been the same for years.

TINSTAFL

[Matey-O]

You crazy /.'ers, always bitching about printers...

Lets do some math here:

Ink cart, Black - $30

Ink cart, Color - $30

Printer (after rebate, laptop purchase, whatever) - Free to $60

Do you REALLY think something that can precicely paint 1200 dots to an inch (That's roughly _115_ million dots on a full color page), in less than 4 minutes costs the company NOTHING to produce, package, advertise, ship and GIVE to you?

If you think so, take my advice and don't go into business.

All of the manufacturers are selling their 'low-end' printers at a loss and expecting to make it up in ink sales. If you decide you don't like that, go FIND a cheap, good, printer with cheap refillable ink...go ahead. What? you can't find one? Why do you think that is?

Pay for it up front or pay for it in installments. Any company that successfully stays in business will get your money in one of those two ways and STAY in business.

Re:What, exactly, is the problem?

[Anonymous Coward]

Justifying R&D costs is not a valid reason for locking people in using proprietary ink cartridges. The R&D costs for any product are amortized one way or another and the decision on how much to spend is based upon how much money you make on the products. If they payback is low then the R&D costs must be kept low if you must make a profit. BTW, the R&D costs are not as high as many people would lead you to believe.

The problem here is that printer companies are trying to make a very large profit for a very long period of time. That is why companies want to be in this business, big profits.

The level of lock-in is somewhat unique to the computing industry where it is technically viable but it generates a lot of ill will on the part of the customer. In the long run it could put the likes of HP out of business

Re:The Gillette Business Model.

[An. (Coward)]

For those of you who aren't familiar with business practices, HP is following the Gillette business model in their printer division.

I don't see Gillette creating blades that dull themselves if you don't use them soon enough.

Re:What, exactly, is the problem?

[scottme]

The market chose the second option some years back

I don't agree. Sure, people were suckered into buying "cheap" inkjet printers but don't try to tell me they did this in the full realization they would get ripped off on the ink.

Refusing to use a cartridge that is not exhausted is unforgivable. I'd have no objection to the printer (driver) complaining that the cart is old and advising me that the print quality may be less than optimal - in fact that would be a welcome feature. But to refuse to work? GMAB.

I will not be buying an HP printer.

Re:The Gillette Business Model.

[the_Bionic_lemming]

Well, Yes and no. Nowadays it's just a pice of rubber and plastic - but the analogy refers to the origional product and intent when razors were those square ones that you slid out and placed into a machined metal holder with folding flaps, and a turnwheel on the bottem to lock the razor in. THOSE Handles were relatively expensive to design and manufacture.

Then they wised up, kept the blades expensive, and went to a cheaper model of handles.

So technically, today you are right, but when taken in the context the business model is referred to , it is an apt analogy.

anti-bundling laws

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, having established that consumers prefer (and have chosen) to pay for the ink, HP is entitled to protect its ink sales. This just seems logical.

It is however not legal. In the US we have anti-bundling laws. That is, you cannot make purchase of one thing contingent upon another. This is to prevent strange pricing scams.

But you say, ho, did you notice Gilette's Sensor and Mach III razors where the razor is virtually free and the blades are expensive? This is indeed a perfect example. There are aftermarket Sensor-compatible blades (I don't know why there are not Mach III ones).

So Gilette is free to embark upon their plan of charging you for the razor by pricing it into the blades, but they have no legal way to protect it. They have to hope the consumer follows along. And the consumer did, the Sensor was a success, people bought the on-brand blade cartridges either because of their better distribution or because people preferred a safer, more familiar produt. Enough people did so to make Gilette a lot of money.

Requiring the purchase of future replacement parts with a product makes it impossible to the customer to determine the true cost of a product. And is why this monopoly on cartridges must end.

Re:The Gillette Business Model.

[Reziac]

[I'll assume you aren't being sarcastic...]

No, you're wrong about that. The BLADE part is ancient technology -- it dates back literally thousands of years. (For that matter, so does ink.)

Back before refillable razors and disposable blades, everyone used a straight razor, which they sharpened themselves, and had to find their own hand-angle to hold it at, to avoid cutting their throat along with their beard. BTW this is why there were barber shops -- many people got their daily shave there, rather than mess with it themselves. (Barber shops used to do haircuts on the side, *not* as their main business.)

The only thing that's changed is that the blade is thinner now, since it no longer needs to be a permanent part of the razor, nor does it need to be able to endure years of resharpening. But at root, it's still the same ancient technology.

Conversely, there is quite a bit of engineering in the handles -- to make sure the blade is set at the appropriate angle so that most people will cut their beards and not their skin; to add lubricant; to consistently seat a disposable blade in the exact same place; to let the user adjust the blade angle to suit himself; to make sure multiple or flex-seated blades follow the intended path over bumps in your face; etc, etc...

Given that the printer is the handle and the ink is the blade -- you can see that the analogy is in fact quite exact. The printer and ink delivery systems needed lots of engineering, whereas ink has been around for several thousand years, and really hasn't changed all that much -- it's still basically pigment microparticles in a slurry, using a liquid that evaporates to leave the particles stuck to the page. The only engineering involved is finding the best particle size and slurry base to flow through the delivery system -- and that's no different from a medieval copyist figuring out which base and pigment were best for blue, red, or gold ink.

Re:"Refilling" has always been a marginal activity

[Reziac]

If refilling is a marginal market, why are the printer manufacturers so afraid of the competition?

I don't think it's wrong that HP and others sell ink -- at whatever prices they think their market can bear. But I do think it's wrong to force the market to have no choice in whose ink they use. What's next, forcing us to print only on approved paper? It could be done, with a machine-readable strip in the paper (akin to what's used in money). No strip, no print.

That would be like Ford telling me I had to use only Ford oil in my truck -- at $5 a quart, instead of the usual $1/qt, even tho Ford's oil and everyone else's oil are functionally identical. If they can convince me that Ford oil is that much better, and worth that much more, cool. Making it less convenient to use another brand, fine. But making my truck stop running if I don't change the oil on THEIR schedule, or making it impossible to use another brand? No, that's not fair at all (nor is it legal under the Magnusson act someone referenced above).

And that's what the printer companies are doing with ink, using the cover of the DMCA to get away with it.

And just as I'd stop buying Ford trucks if they *forced* me to use drastically-overpriced Ford oil -- I won't buy a printer that has similar notions. They're cutting their own throats here.

If they'd sell rationally-priced refill ink, they could corner that market too. Keep the prefilled carts at the high convenience price, and sell "genuine HP ink" refill kits for those who care to take on the bother of refilling -- and they'd be competitive in the refill market (probably at a slightly higher price because of the "genuine" concept). In fact, ideally, they should partner with some existing ink refiller, which would expand the refiller's market as well as their own, and would make consumers happy to buy their printers, rather than pissed because they feel cheated by the current ink policies.

Cripes, if they'd spent 1/10th as much R&D on refill kits as they did on preventing refills, they'd have that market all to themselves already.

(I don't even use an inkjet anymore, and I still think it sucks.)