Take a few minutes to add up how much money you spent on replacement inkjet cartridges since purchasing that deal-of-the-century inkjet printer and chances are, it wasn't such a deal after all. In fact, your printer is more like a bottomless well, forever needing ink to quench a never-ending thirst.
These days you can buy inkjet printers for about $75 and color laser printers for less than $300. Wow, you might say, isn't modern technology amazing, isn't this a bargain? The answer is an emphatic NO.So you've brought home the bargain-basement priced inkjet printer that includes a "starter" cartridge, which translates to a smidgeon of ink. Before you know it, the cartridge has to be replaced. And replaced again. And if you're anything like me, you don't keep track of the last time you had to rush out and buy another cartridge. It's one of those insidious incidental costs that creep up on you.
For the inkjet printer cartel, replacement ink represents a whole lot of profit. The typical inkjet printer owner buys about four ink cartridges a year, at a cost of minimum $20 each, so let's do the math. According to Lyra research, total inkjet cartridge shipments will reach 1.5 billion units worldwide this year, including 514 million in North America. At $20 per cartridge (and some upwards of $60 each), that adds up to a $32 billion market. Cha-Ching!
No wonder Epson settled a class action lawsuit that gives consumers $45 aimed towards the purchase of printers and ink cartridges. Just like water off a duck's back! (The lawsuit started after it was revealed that Epson inkjet printers and cartridges showed users that the ink cartridge was empty when in fact it was not.)
"I think consumers are tired of being gouged by the major printer manufacturers that force people to not have a choice when it comes to ink and toner cartridges," says Todd McCutcheon of Australia. "We bought a $300 Dell AIO 960 series inkjet printer that is robbing us blind in ink costs... Lexmark makes the printer but we cannot buy replacement anywhere except through Dell." McCutcheon can't refill his printer because the computer chip says it is still empty. "The typical cartridge barely gets through 150 pages at 30-40% black. We have spent over $1,000 in ink in the 12 months we've owned this hog! I'm beginning to think it would be cheaper to throw it away."
Bill Clarke from San Diego is fuming. "The chip on my Epson ink cartridges indicates nearly empty when in fact there is at least 25 percent ink left over," he says.
The cartridges have a small integrated circuit that is supposed to monitor ink levels: when it shows that the cartridge is empty you remove it. In a perfect world, this would be a good idea. But the cartridge is never empty. And if you try to use the cartridge further, the printer won't allow the cartridge to work. The manufacturer doesn't allow the cartridge to be refilled by the user or third party provider because the chip still shows an empty cartridge.
"It is common knowledge that, even though inkjet printers are relatively inexpensive, it is the cost of the inks that in fact make ink jets one of the most expensive ways to print from a PC or camera memory card," explains Clarke. "Epson makes millions of dollars from the sale of its consumable products, especially ink, yet the false reports provided by these cartridges represent a multi-million dollar fraud, considering the multitude of these printers sold and the millions of partially empty cartridges that are disposed of." Not to mention cartridge garbage.
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