One brave, intelligent, and super-cool Boston man has taken the law into his own hands -- vis-à-vis a bunch of attorneys -- and is taking
HP and
Staples to task for an alleged antitrust scheme. According to Ranjit Bedi, the two companies have been in cahoots in an attempt to stop the sale of inexpensive, third-party printer ink at Staples stores. In the suit, it's suggested that HP paid Staples $100 million to refrain from sale of the cartridges. The story might be harder to believe if it weren't for the nature of the printer ink business, which seems to be rife with companies engaging in questionable business practices (like selling cartridges which give you an inaccurate read on ink remaining,
barring the use of third-party cartridges, and wildly overcharging for branded ink). If you've ever owned an ink-jet printer, we're pretty sure you know exactly what we're talking about. People -- it's time to fight back.
posted December 18th 2007 9:52PM
"But at least Apple doesn't charge a premium for its OS like the inkjet companies do for their cartridges. "
Haha I wonder what crazy reasoning brings you to that sentence!
No I didn't read it, just saw Apple in there.
Oops, I meant to say "companies are able" not "companies are bleh". Confounded iPhone keyboard.
I purchased a Kodak 5300 printer and the genuine ink is inexpensive. Photo prints are fantastic and are suppose to have a very long archival life.
HP = Hardly Prints
Work it out. The $14 cartridges (you need 8) for the Epson R1800 and R380 work out to nearly $7000/gallon. Kinda makes gas sound like a heck of a deal.
Jim
THATS IT! I'm printing with gas now. It'll also make questionable documents easier to burn :D.
so that tech that polaroid is making sure looks like a bargain right about now :]
as reported earlier around the internet :]
http://www.zink.com
Where's the picture of Denny Crane?!
@kilikili: I was going to bring that up. I heard that kodak wants to get back in the printer business in a big way. They are trying to sell cheap ink to get marketshare. If I did a lot of printing I'd be looking at the prices of a kodak printer.
I am so disgusted by the amount of ink my Epson R1800 wastes due to needing head cleaning cycles for a couple of blocked nozzles, that I think I'm gonna just give up on printing photos at home. Which is a bummer. Someone sue Epson, please. Meanwhile, anyone wanna go smash a printer with baseball bats with me?
PC LOAD LETR?!
As a long time HWP/HPQ shareholder, all I can say to those who complain about the cost is wah-wah-wah. The market sets the price of ink, and as long as people are willing to pay the prices they do, ink will cost what it does. No printer manufacturer is going to create a price war to erode the profit on consumables, so your best option will be to use refills.
wow someones finally taking this personal. these damn hp inks are so expensive.
A few years ago, I went looking for an inkjet - highest priority was that non-OEM ink had to work - so I found an ebay store that sold 3rd-party ink in bulk packs (15 carts for $40 (6 black and 3 of each of the 3 colors), then went looking for a printer that took that ink! Backwards, I know, but I was fed up with spending $15-$30 per cart. The Epson CX 5400 fit the bill and has been printing for 4 years without a hitch - even the photos I print are pretty good. I don't expect them to last forever - If I did, I would print them professionally anyway (Kodak Kiosk). As far as the Kodak printers go, take a look at one of the prints (local Best Buy) - absolutely amazing quality - and the ink is much cheaper and only going down.
The last straw for me happened a couple of years ago. I bought myself a really nice Epson for doing photo printing. I had just bought a brand new $35.00 black cartridge and went to print a text-only document. The driver refused to allow the page to be printed because I was out of yellow. Yellow, not black. I was so pissed off I threw it straight in the trash and bought a Konica-Minolta printer for a hundred dollars. That cheap little thing will print on anything I throw at it, including weird plastic-based stock for wedding invitations.
At work we have Lexmark Z55 and Z53 printers and these things are horrible. The feed path is so poorly engineered they'll actually pull already printed pages from the output tray back into the printer and jam. On any computer that is using that printer for the first time it'll nag you to do a head alignment every time you print. Unless you tell it otherwise, the drivers will automatically drench the paper in precious ink and take forever to do it. Draft mode is perfectly acceptible for text but you have to change the setting on every boot for every program.
In the end, this is what I do. I use my trusty laser for document printing, my wife prints her university assignments on it as well. An inkjet will never be able to compete with a laser for text. Photos get uploaded to Wallgreen's and I pick them up in 30 minutes. The price per print is embarrassingly cheap and the quality is outstanding. I will never buy another inkjet printer as long as I live and I tell as many people as I can to do the same. They are an environmental scourge since it's cheaper to buy a new printer than new ink. They have been a scam for years
The lawsuit is frivolous. If he took the time to research he would see that he can buy OEM Inkjet cartridges on the cheap. All he has to do is go to Staples and buy twin packs, combo packs and tri-packs. When buying multi packs you get a discount. Even when you buy two packs of the same cartridge you get a discount. Its clearly marked when you go to the store. On top of that you join Staples rewards and you get 10% back every month. As well, when you bring in your empty cartridges for recycling they give you $3.00 back. For example I buy HP 02 ink carts for my printer. The color ones are 9.99 a piece. If I buy separately I pay 9.99 X 5 = 49.95. I buy the 02 combo pack which has all 5 and I pay 44.99. Plus I get 10% back at the end of the month which makes it 40.50. Then I bring back my empties and I get back $3 x 5 = 15.00. So at the end I pay 25.00 for a combo pack. I dont understand the logic of his suit. It makes no sense.
I wonder what it costs to manufacture that gallon of ink. That's gotta net some serious profit.
Disposable ink cartridges are overpriced and wastefully. My Epson R300 costs around $80 to refill. The cartridges are tiny and lock early. I started getting refillable ink cartridges from Atlantic Ink jet - they cost about $30ish more and can be refilled anytime up to 10ish times.
If you use HP printer(s) on a Mac, do this to save a ton of ink and increase your print speed immensely.
Launch textedit (or almost any other app that prints).
File -> Print
Drop down the list that reads Copies and Pages, and choose Paper Type / Quality.
Drop down the Quality list and select Fast draft.
Now go back to the main print dialog box and drop down the Presets menu. Choose Save as... and pick a name ... like oh I don't know ... maybe ... Fast.
Then click Print and be amazed at how much faster your printer is. You don't need the higher-quality settings for most print
jobs.
What a scam!!!! I could not believe how much money we have had to pay for the minute refill ink cartridges (02) used in the HP #3200 All-In-One printer. We are able to print only a few 8"x11/2" photo paper images when one or two or more replace ink warning appears. A few images later and the printer will not print at all. When printing black copies, one or more of the color replacement warning lights will come on and will not let us print until the color cartridge is replaced!
Going to buy new replacement ink is where the real rip-off appears to occur. At the Office Depot store, we were enticed to buy the HP Photo Value Pack which is marketed to be more of a "Value" when compared to the individual replacement cartridges. What HP doesn't tell you is that the cartridges in the kit are not filled with enough ink in comparison to the individual replacement units. This is the old bait and switch game. It is hard to believe that a company of such a high profile and reputation as HP would let such a scheme continue. The deceipt is not in the statement on the package stating that there is "ink and paper for 150 professional quality photos", but that it is marketed as a better deal than the individual replacement cartrides without stating on the outside of the package what the enclosed cartridges contain in net ounces of weight to allow the shopper to compare with the individual packs. In my opinion, the HP lawyers must have added Asterisk one and two stating that the actual cartridges have been "customized" to print only 150 4"x6" pages. HP actually partially filled the cartridges or even took some ink out? Really!!!!
I can only hope that the New York Attorney General gets takes notice of this very effective tool to decieve an unsuspecting public!!!
Sincerely,
Glen Turpening