The Printer Ink Racket

[Tom Sweetnam]

Why can I buy a whole new Canon PIXMA MG3500 wireless all-in-one printer with included 241 color and 240 black in cartridges, for cheaper than I can buy just the ink cartridges themselves? You may as well pitch printers in the landfill every time you need ink these days, because it's just as cheap to buy a whole new unit as it is to replace the ink cartridges. So that's what I did. I bought a new printer and saved 80 cents over the price of just buying the ink. What's wrong with this picture?

 

[Mr. H.]

I don't see a picture. Did you post a link to it?

 

[XPostFacto]

I have an old HP Photosmart 8150. All I need is a printer that I can use to print out my tax forms when I use Turbo Tax every year. I used to use it to print out snapshots, but it can no longer handle the high storage SD cards. The printer still works fine, but it's really outdated now. I can't even find printer ink cartridge 99. They don't seem to supply it any store. Of course, I can buy them from Amazon, but that gets old. I'd buy a new printer, but it seems all the new printers require multiple as in 4 to 6 ink cartridges vs. my Photosmart that only requires 2.

 

[iamwhatiseem]

I can attest with first hand experience that desktop toner is an unbelievable ripoff.
Staggering really.
In our shop we have two production high-end printers. 90 13"x19" sheets per minute output. (one sided).
The toner for this comes in plastic tubes that I would estimate hold about 1 gallon of toner for each of the four colors. Cost? $168 a bottle.
Your average HP desktop printer cartridge is $30...holds less than 2 ounces. So that is about $18 per ounce.
There are 128 oz. in a gallon...for which the cost is $168 = $1.31 per oz.
Quality of print? Are you kidding? We have two Ricoh 901 Graphics + printers that cost $139,000 each. You think the print quality is any good?Waaay better than your little desktop printer.
It is an amazing ripoff. No idea how they get away with it.
Here is another example. HP also makes VERY high end "wide format" printers. The cartridges for these use 8 colors. Brilliant prints - museum quality. The ink for these printers are way more expensive than toner. They cost $240 each. BUUUT they contain 26 ounces. Or $9.23 an ounce. Still half the cost of the lowly desktop printer ink.

 

[Ringel05]

One can buy a basic printer, often for under $20 but yes, the ink will cost as much or more than the unit itself. It's the most profitable and sustainable business strategy as each printer is sold at cost or at a loss, the profit lies in selling us the one thing we need to make it work and build their profit margin into the sale of ink. That way instead of making a one time large profit they make a smaller profit continuously on the sale of ink cartridges.
If they did it the other way around that $20 printer would cost $200 at minimum.

 

[mamooth]

I gave up on color printing and got a laser printer. Much faster, good quality, no stupid 3-minute warmup needed every time I print, toner cartridge lasts forever. Just no color. But I haven't missed the ability to print color at all.

 

[iamwhatiseem]

I gave up on color printing and got a laser printer. Much faster, good quality, no stupid 3-minute warmup needed every time I print, toner cartridge lasts forever. Just no color. But I haven't missed the ability to print color at all.

Yep..I have an HP Laserjet 1300..I have had the same cartridge for...damn..I think 2 years now.
Course I do have a little advantage, If I want a color print I do it at work since that is what we do.

 

[mamooth]

If I ever do need color printing, I can bring my flash drive to the Fedex Store down the road, and get something of much better quality than what a home inkjet printer would make.