Printer Ink, It's a SCAM

it is outrageous, someone needs to sue the printer companies

The breaking point for me was going in to buy a replacement cartridge and seeing that a brand new printer was cheaper than a cartridge.

I remember someone who helped my family with computer stuff, since I was a kid, he will connect ink reservoirs to the cartridge and it would be amazing, and that was yeaaaars before companies like epson finally join the "printing black market". Rest in peace Gustavo, you insane smart ass, love ya!

I am always amazed that no-one has taken the printer manufacturers to court over such a blatant rip off. I changed to a mono laser much better suited to childrens homework printing.

I worked with HP, and got to see the sheer depths of depravity when it comes to screwing the customer. 1. They have one of the harshest cartridge ID systems, to the point that each cartridge knows the batch it was made from. The reason for this is so the printer can reject single-cartridge replacements, forcing the customer to replace them all. 2. They have multiple layers of detection to ensure the cartridge was never unsealed. The printers immediately break the seal on cartridges as a part of entering them, and it also knows if part of it has been peeled open because a customer attempted to open a secondary entry point. They do this to screw people that misaligned the cartridge or attempted to refill it. 3. They have detectors that err on the side of caution when determining ink levels. They use this to shut down the printer until new cartridges are added, which is to intentionally waste ink and force the customer to replace them all. 4. They have been "enhancing" your black ink with cyan, and there is no option to stop it. They do this to intentionally waste one of the smaller cartridges to force the customer to replace them all. 5. They intentionally slash quality assurance for cartridges. This means the IDs and detectors can randomly fail, which they've programmed to always deny access. This is because some people don't return faulty cartridges, which means they get a double sale. 6. This system creates a lot of ink-filled trash. Not only is the plastic going to last a few centuries, but the ink is highly toxic and has been proven to poison groundwater if allowed to seep. They know this is happening, and are simply trying to keep quiet to not draw attention to it. There's a lot of other ways they're hurting their customers, but I'll keep it to the ink side of things. If an Epson actually lets you refill the cartridges, I recommend shouting it from the mountaintops, because I was led to believe the printer industry had a gentleman's agreement amongst each other to keep ink artificially scarce by any means necessary.

As somebody who has worked in a Walmart photo department and told people often that cartridges were scammy, this level of scam even surprised me.

Decided to sell off my canon printer and that was one of the best decisions I have ever made. I went to purchase an Epson EcoTank and it's way better! At least we don't get ripped off like a sucker! Thank you Epson for saving us!

Can’t Europe intervene here, this is getting out of control

Also to mention, if you’re not using the printer often enough, the cartridge will dry out. So you still have to continuously buy new ones if you’re printing a little or a lot

After nearly $200 dollars of ink, over a year, I could only printed 15 pages. It's infuriating that it would dry up in less than 2 weeks. Yes, this sbould be giant lawsuit to stop these criminals.

The saddest part is that if you print every couple of months and only a few pages you aren't saving anything because the cartridges dry up when they are in the machine. Not only that but they contaminate the ink head with dried on ink as it evaporates. Then you get to buy a new printer as it costs more to clean or replace the head than a new machine. Where is the government when this kind of theft is institutionalized? They could actually do something for the consumer...... yeah we all know how that goes.

I've had the Epson eco print for about 3 years now and still haven't gone through original ink and it's working great... Love it.

Nothing new here, the scam of these printer inks has been around for 30 odd years.

I sell printers in a retail electronics store. I always thought printer cartridges were a scam and guided my customers to laser printers. Glad that my suspicions were confirmed.

I have been using an HP printer for the last 2 years, in the beginning I always bought original cartridges from HP, but recently I discovered that the cartridges from my printer can be refilled with third party ink, and it works well. Usually I buy cartridges for 15 dollars and they usually run out in two or three months because I rarely use them, now I only need to spend 3 dollars for refill ink and so far the ink hasn't run out, maybe it's been about 6 months since i buy the ink.

I gave up on ink jet printers years ago. I have a Brother HL2270DW laser printer for B&W everyday use and an HP M25DW for color. That one paid for itself after my first use when I printed 21 copies of a 25-page family history booklet with photos (many in color) to send as Christmas presents. I even bought a used spiral binding punch off of eBay and still came out money ahead instead of having it done at an office supply store.

The chip on the cartridge also counts the number of pages printed and tells the printer not to print any more when it estimates you're out of ink. This is why sometimes your printer says you're out but you're still getting sharp, clean printing and other times, you get faded printing before it tells you you're out. More often than not, your printer will lock out and tell you to replace the cartridge before it's even empty.

OMG! We should do a nationwide class action suit against printer companies, because that is totally unacceptable.

glad you discovered ink tank printers, and I hope they've been serving you well! I've owned a lower-end Epson EcoTank printer for over two years now, printing photos, documents, CD covers, stickers, etc., and it's been serving me very well. I only used 50% of the black ink and 20% of the colour inks so far. I seriously can't imagine a reason to ever buy an ink cartridge printer again. I never even had issues with ink drying up, even when I didn't use the printer for several weeks.

Printer companies will literally do anything to prevent you from using their product lmao