$8,000-per-gallon printer ink leads to antitrust lawsuit

Xerobull · Dec 19, 2007

Further proof that inkjets suck:

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$8,000-per-gallon printer ink leads to antitrust lawsuit

By Ryan Paul | Published: December 18, 2007 - 08:37AM CT

A Boston man has filed a class-action lawsuit accusing hardware maker HP and office supply retailer Staples of colluding to inflate the price of printer ink cartridges in violation of federal antitrust law. According to the suit, HP allegedly paid Staples $100 million to refrain from selling inexpensive third-party ink cartridges, although the suit doesn't make it clear how plaintiff Ranjit Bedi arrived at that figure.

For most printer companies, ink is the bread and butter of their business. The price of ink for HP ink-jet printers can be as much as $8,000 per gallon, a figure that makes gas-pump price gouging look tame. HP is currently the dominant company in the printing market, and a considerable portion of the company's profits come from ink.

The printer makers have been waging an all-out war against third-party vendors that sell replacement cartridges at a fraction of the price. The tactics employed by the printer makers to maintain monopoly control over ink distribution for their printing products have become increasingly aggressive. In the past, we have seen HP, Epson, Lenovo and other companies attempt to use patents and even the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in their efforts to crush third-party ink distributors.

The companies have also turned to using the ink equivalent of DRM, the use of microchips embedded in ink cartridges that work with a corresponding technical mechanism in the printer that blocks the use of unauthorized third-party ink. Adding insult to injury, most printers are lying, filthy ink thieves, according to a recent study, misreporting that they are low on ink when they are not.

Bedi's suit asks for unspecified damages and an injunction barring the two companies from engaging in anticompetitive business practices.
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And there's more:

Study: Inkjet printers are filthy, lying thieves

By Ken Fisher | Published: June 18, 2007 - 11:34PM CT

A new study says that on average, more than half of the ink from inkjet cartridges is wasted when users toss them in the garbage. Why is that interesting? According to the study, users are tossing the cartridges when their printers are telling them they're out of ink, not when they necessarily are out of ink.
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* Like PB&J, cryptography and... inkjet cartridges

The study by TÜV Rheinland looked at inkjet efficiency across multiple brands, including Epson (who commissioned the study), Lexmark, Canon, HP, Kodak, and Brother. They studied the efficiency of both single and multi-ink cartridges. Espon's printers were among the highest rated, at more than 80 percent efficiency using single-ink cartridges. Kodak's EasyShare 5300 was panned as the worst printer tested, wasting 64 percent of its ink in tests. TÜV Rheinland measured cartridge weights before and after use, stopping use when printers reported that they were out of ink.

That's the first problem. Printers routinely report that they are low on ink even when they aren't, and in some cases there are still hundreds of pages worth of ink left.

The second issue is a familiar one: multi-ink cartridges can be rendered "empty" when only one color runs low. Multi-ink cartridges store three to five colors in a single cartridge. Printing too many photos from the air show will kill your cartridge faster than you can say "blue skies," as dominant colors (say, "blue") are used faster than the others. Therein lies the reason Epson backed the study: the company is singing the praises of its single-ink cartridge approach, an approach which is necessarily more efficient in terms of wasted ink because there's only one color per cartridge, and thus only one cartridge to replace when that color runs out.

Single ink cartridges aren't exactly perfect, however. Such cartridges still were reported as empty with an average of 20 percent of their ink left, which means that an entire cartridge worth of ink is wasted for every five which are used. Given the sky-high prices of ink, this is an alarming find. Epson's own R360 posted the best numbers, with only 9 percent wasted. Yet again, Epson commissioned the tests, so we must ask what's missing.

The study did not measure how much ink is lost due to lack of use, or through cleaning processes. Inkjet cartridges are known to suffer from quality problems if they are not used for long periods of time, sometimes "drying up." This problem has been addressed in recent years, but it has not been eliminated.

The study also did not calculate the total cost per page, which arguably is more important than efficiency. If Epson's multicartridge approach is more efficient, it could nonetheless still be more expensive per page than multi-ink cartridge systems. In its defense, Epson and TÜV Rheinland said that their study focused on the ecological impact of inkjet printing. This is a familiar argument: hybrid cars have also been criticized for their supposed efficiency, with debates raging as to whether or not your average driver will ever see cost savings from better miles-per-gallon given the relative expensive of hybrid engines.

As such, anyone in the market for an inkjet printer still needs to compare specific models to one another to get a feel for efficiency, and Epson's efficiency claims needs to be weighed next to the comparative cost of competing inkjet solutions.

Still, the unintended result of this study is that regardless of the battle between single- and multi-ink cartridges, inkjet printers themselves are significantly off the mark when it comes to reporting the fullness of their cartridges. As the Eagles would say, you're best off when you "take it, to the limit." (Or with a laser printer, one can always do the toner cartridge cha-cha.)
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Mr. Brightside · Dec 19, 2007

Just buy a laser printer and get some refillable powder from Ebay. You can print a whole years worth of documents for about 15 bucks.

yc324 · Dec 19, 2007

Mr. Brightside said:

Just buy a laser printer and get some refillable powder from Ebay. You can print a whole years worth of documents for about 15 bucks.
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Or get an inkjet refill kit on eBay that has a good third-party ink.

Xerobull · Dec 19, 2007

I just print at my office. Still, inkjets are a scam. I always tell people to get the free ones then toss them when they're out of ink.

chow_yun_fat · Dec 19, 2007

Mr. Brightside said:

Just buy a laser printer and get some refillable powder from Ebay. You can print a whole years worth of documents for about 15 bucks.
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more info? i search for laser printer powder?

rockbox · Dec 19, 2007

chow_yun_fat said:

more info? i search for laser printer powder?
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Its not worth it since the toner gets everywhere. Just buy refilled toner cartridges. I got a two 17K page toner cartridges for my Lexmark for less than 50 bucks.

tested911 · Dec 19, 2007

LOL I remeber when I had a lexmark Printer and that when the ink ran out I just went out and bought the same printer and sold the old one.. I made about 10 bucks every time.. It was one of those printers that cost only $50 -$75

Mr. Brightside · Dec 19, 2007

chow_yun_fat said:

more info? i search for laser printer powder?
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rockbox said:

Its not worth it since the toner gets everywhere. Just buy refilled toner cartridges. I got a two 17K page toner cartridges for my Lexmark for less than 50 bucks.
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I have a Samsung ML 1710 Laser printer. Anyways, I just typed in the model number into Ebay and it gave me this result:

http://cgi.ebay.com/3-Pack-Samsung-...ryZ51327QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

This is what I bought last time.

Replacing the ink powder is very easy. All I needed was a screwdriver and just poured the ink into the chamber. Took maybe 10 minutes tops.
No mess or anything.

Just lay a piece of newspaper underneath to be extra careful as to not spill anything.

Its better than shelling out 40 bucks for a new toner cartridge.

I got those 3 bottles pictured in the auction, and I have only used 1 of them so far in the past year. Thus it lasts a long time.

hooroo · Dec 19, 2007

yeah, now they're saying laser printers are bad for your health

ghettocheeze · Dec 19, 2007

We should sue razor blade companies as well while we are at it. They sell you cheap sets then make you buy the replacements for a fortune.

How about cellphone carriers for giving away free phones to strangle you with contracts?

In sales there is always a catch and nothing illegal about selling a product below cost in order to make a profit on the supplies later on.

Walk into a computer store these days and they will practically give you a printer for very little or even free sometimes when bundled with a new PC. There is reason they want you to come back and keep buying the supplies.

This a business model so many companies use to retain you as a paying customer. Same with vacuum bags, automatic airfreshners and a million other household products.

magnetik · Dec 19, 2007

ghettocheeze said:

We should sue razor blade companies as well while we are at it. They sell you cheap sets then make you buy the replacements for a fortune.
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you can buy generic replacements for a lot of popular brands of razors.

ghettocheeze said:

How about cellphone carriers for giving away free phones to strangle you with contracts?
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you have other options.. like prepay or month to month.

ghettocheeze said:

In sales there is always a catch and nothing illegal about selling a product below cost in order to make a profit on the supplies later on.
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that's fair

ghettocheeze said:

Walk into a computer store these days and they will practically give you a printer for very little or even free sometimes when bundled with a new PC. There is reason they want you to come back and keep buying the supplies.
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that's fair too

ghettocheeze said:

This a business model so many companies use to retain you as a paying customer. Same with vacuum bags, automatic airfreshners and a million other household products.
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but gouging prices and preventing other manufacturers from getting into the game is wrong. I never ever thought "man.. I'm getting gouged on these vacuum bags" There are also other options for air fresheners. I bought a whole big bag of Nag Champas incense for $13 on ebay that I got 4 years ago and still have 3/4 of the bag left. but you get the point

competition is what drives america.

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$8,000-per-gallon printer ink leads to antitrust lawsuit

Xerobull ...and I'm all out of bubblegum
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$8,000-per-gallon printer ink leads to antitrust lawsuit

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