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HP & Staples Collude On $8,000/Gallon Ink?
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "HP and Staples are facing an anti-trust lawsuit over replacement printer cartridges. According to the lawsuit, HP paid Staples $100 million to refuse to stock competing ink cartridges. HP could make that back in short order when you consider that printer ink can cost $8,000 per gallon and certain printers deceive users to waste as much as 64% of their ink."
Just ask Canon about the failure of their Wifi printers - you could not buy them at *any* retail store (or even Dell, which carried the rest of Canon's lineup) because the printer did not enable the retailer to sell the $30 USB cables.
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I'm pretty sure that paying a retailer not to stock your competitors' products constitutes collusion and is a clear violation of antitrust laws. This is akin to Nike paying Wal*Mart $100 million not to stock Adidas shoes. The only thing that muddies the water a little bit is that 'compatible' inkjet cartridges violate the DMCA and probably several HP patents, and hence are illegal. Anyone know how this might affect the lawsuit?
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It is only a matter of time before someone offered inexpensive ink. It was obvious that HP was taking extreme measures to prevent someone from competing in that space.
This shows how important regulation of businesses we need to have. Too many people don't want to get involved in anything (government or otherwise). It is sad that the people who run these businesses feel they don't have to be accountable at all to anyone about how they run their business.
Can be refilled. Runs cartridges until they're dry. Built like a tank.
Wish they still made printers like that. I'd like something as robust but faster and higher resolution.
>for a few cents a liter
Maybe that's why it's taxed as much as it is... Oil companies continue without paying the true cost.
When the cartridges shipped with your printer only have 10% the capacity of a new one off the shelf, to force you to buy a new one (with it's far higher profit margin), THAT is what people should be jumping up & down about.
I'm a perfectionist but I'm trying to cut back.
...is printers that refuse to print a document when the level of one color of ink is low even if the document being printed doesn't use that color at all. I have an Epson that I like pretty much. It has individual cartridges for each color of ink but if, say, the cyan cartridge is empty, I can't print even if the page is nothing but black text. There's no real reason for it, it's strictly a software (or firmware) limitation put in by the manufacturer.
This ain't rocket surgery.
Since I run a small print shop for churches, we go through a ton of ink and toner, to the tune of about $3000 per week. We buy ALL our ink and toner is very large amounts (toner by the kilogram, ink by the half gallon). Refills are cheap. And yet, I don't think that retailers deciding together to not stock competitive products is "bad" collusion -- it's just how their market needs to work to be profitable.
Anyone can go online and buy cheap refilled cartridges that tend to work. If they're buying locally, it might be that they don't trust the Internet (stupid reason), or that they waited too long to stock up on ink (probably true). I yell at my folks constantly for paying $40 for one cartridge when I can get them a replacement for $3, but usually its due to the dreaded "Out of ink" message. Convenience can often times mean MONEY.
The manufacturers screwed up, big time. They didn't listen to the market, and they decided to give away the printer and hope to make it up on the ink. That's not how most markets work, not even the razor market now. Every item has to have a profit, or someone will find a way to sell your high markup goods cheaper. Many more people now are learning that the $49 inkjet has $49 cartridges OEM, or $12 cartridges aftermarket. The days of the $49 loss-leader are over (although I think you can probably make a profitable inkjet that sells at $35, with reduced features and a generic print driver).
I honestly don't think collusion is a big deal. I know it supposedly hurts consumers, but in the long run, competition DOES begin due to what seems like obvious price fixing. I recall the early days of computer RAM when you honestly had few resources for brands. Now we have dozens. When a few companies collude on RAM pricing, the competition generally fixes it. It may take a few years, but it happens, and the worst thing to happen to those colluding is that they lose market share or go out of business when consumers discover that they've gouged people.
Legal action is unnecessary. Let the market work. More laws and regulations will make it HARDER for new companies to enter the market.
Why people continue to buy ink jets is beyond me. I paid only $350 for an HP Color Laserjet 2605dn a year ago, and my starter cartridges are still going strong. This printer has built-in duplexing, networking, web management, and is postscript so works flawlessly with any computer you'd like to use with it. Bonus: no worrying about ink cartriges drying up, or print heads clogging.
/. I'm not a subscriber, but I've had this account for several years, so according to the FAQ I should be able to tag articles.
Buy a laser printer. For pictures, have them developed at wal-mart for like $0.10 each.
BTW...HTH do I tag an article on
So how long will it be before somebody manufactures an industrial-grade inkjet printer with durable metal parts, which takes bulk ink (by flexible hoses, from litre bottles which can be hot-swapped) and incorporates PostScript Level 3 in hardware so absolutely no driver issues?
There's definitely a market for such a machine. I've been using a HP Business Inkjet, which is certainly semi-industrial and although not PS, uses a common driver; but it still takes ink cartridges (double-sized black cartridge, though) and a new set adds up to a hefty amount. A bulk-fed, metal-built printer would easily outlast the number of cartridges you could have bought for the same price.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
The "cheapness" of oil is only a testament to the value of crude as a natural resource, not to the benevolent oil companies who do so much for so little. Future generations will look back enviously at how we got energy just by sticking a tap in the dirt and turning on the spigot.
A couple of years before I got rid of my 5L, I found out that there is a recall on these printers. It appears that the paper lifter isn't "grabby" enough, causing it to jam when feeding paper. HP had a program where they would send you a kit to install a new lifter for free. You might want to look around and see if they are still offering it.
As far as what happened to HP... Two words: Carly Fiorina.
I worked on an HP account for almost 6 months (too long heh). HP, as a company, were great, they'll go to amazing lengths for the customer. However, because of that experience, I have not (since then) and will not support or recommend any liquid ink printer, no matter who the manufacturer is. Mark-up like you would NOT believe on those cartridges. It was explained to me something like this: If you have a barrel of oh, let's say INK, and you ship it across the border, that barrel of ink has a tariff applied to it. If you ship it back again, there's another tariff. Ship it across again, yet another tariff (aka markup on top of markup). Now, if that barrel of ink cost only pennies to begin with...and winds up costing hundreds...uh...hello...we're getting FLEECED here... The only time I'd ever recommend an inkjet is when the person or company is in a remote area, and absolutely requires the convenience. colour lasers are becoming affordable if colour is required. Heck even solid-ink printers are coming down now, and produce fantastic photos, AND the ink doesn't dry up or expire (HP had cartridges that could read the time and date from the connected computer, and would expire after 6 months I believe, regardless how much ink was remaining...not sure if they're still on the market). For Grandma, get her to take those digital pics to London Drugs or Costco, pretty well any place that develops film will take your CD of JPG's and print them on photo quality paper, with much higher quality materials than most consumer stuff, and for WAY cheaper than you can do it at home. It's just better economics. It's often cheaper to buy a new printer, with warranty and ink, than it is to replace every cartridge in that same printer. After going through 5 printers this way - I've given up. I will simply NOT support that economy anymore. Pissing money away just isn't my thing. But hey, I'm an oddball. With eyes wide open.
Here's the one I own (in my print business):
http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&fcategoryid=180&modelid=15835
There also are smaller commercial-grade inkjets than this one, usually for up to "A3" (DIN) sizes (roughly 2xletter) with color management tools, mostly for media design businesses that want to print a color proof using color profiles of their offset print publishers to get a simulation of the final output before giving it to them for printing. Or, for anyone who wants to print very good photos up to A3 size and is unwilling to wait for a service provider or to rely on their color management - because often photo printers who serve the mass market have no or no good color management, knowing their customers don't have it or even know what this is anyway.