Loose Canon

[Chez_Guevara]

Andy Vickers,
Managing Director,
Canon (UK),
Woodhatch,
Reigate,
Surrey,
RH2 8BF.

Dear Andy,

I am the proud owner of a Canon Pixma MP150 All-In-One inkjet printer.

Allow me to congratulate you on a fine piece of technology. It not only prints things but scans and copies them as well. The retail price varies between £41 and £55 which I consider to be excellent value for money.

However, in front of every silver lining there is a cloud. Two high capacity replacement printer cartridges for the MP150, namely the CL-51 (colour with 21 ml ink) and the PG-50 (black with 22 ml ink) recently cost me a total of £43.48. Based upon recent normal usage I expect these cartridges to last about 2 months.

You have not released the patents for the CL-51 and PG-50, so it is not possible to make significant savings by sourcing cloned cartridges from third party suppliers. The issue is therefore clear.

When the cartridges run dry of ink, it is cheaper to buy a new MP150 (complete with cartridges) rather than buy the cartridges alone. At the end of this year I will therefore be the proud owner of six MP150 printers, five of which I intend to use as Christmas presents for members of my unsuspecting family. At the end of next year I will have six more MP150s, which will be distributed to homeless people for them to sit on in preference to uncomfortable park benches.

I have racked my brain endlessly to ascertain why your pricing policy is so anomalous. After much thought, I have concluded that you are so strapped for cash that you have been forced to recoup the shortfall through sales of the CL-51 and PG-50 alone. Naturally you haven’t told anybody (shareholders, auditors, Stock Exchange etc) about your financial difficulties because you are too embarrassed. There are times in my life when I too have been financially embarrassed so I know what I’m talking about.

I am always most distressed when I hear of a multinational company like yourselves in so much trouble. Nevertheless, it is fully understood by most reasonable people that customers must make sacrifices in order to satisfy the needs of shareholders and senior management who have desirable lifestyles to maintain. Therefore I have decided to help you in your hour of need.

Please find enclosed a £5 note. This should cover your immediate requirements. I propose to pay you £5 every month until things improve for you, and to this end I suggest that you send me a direct debit mandate which I will sign and return to you. Thinking about this further, it might be easier if we make the direct debit variable so you can help yourself to my cash according to your needs at any particular time.

I enclose a stamped addressed envelope for your reply.

Yours sincerely,

C. Guevara

[Throatwarbler_Mangrove]

I thought it was common practice for printer companies to fill the tanks of new printers only a third full, or somesuch? If so, that would explain why your started cartridges only lasted for a bit. I imagine the new ones will last longer.

Also, have you tried refilling the cartridges yourself? It’s a little tricky and can be messy but a lot cheaper. In every mall around here there is a place where they do it for you for anominal charge.

[matt]

My sympathies. I should warn you however that it’s not unknown for the cartridges that arrive with a new printer to be mostly empty, and so purchasing new printers as a source of cartridges may not be as cost effective as simply buying the cartridges.

[Mangetout]

Printer manufacturers are like drug dealers in respect of consumables; practically give you the printer and the ‘first hit’ of ink, then encourage you to mug pensioners and steal car stereos to be able to afford it from then on.

Well, sort of.

[Mangetout]

@matt

My sympathies. I should warn you however that it’s not unknown for the cartridges that arrive with a new printer to be mostly empty, and so purchasing new printers as a source of cartridges may not be as cost effective as simply buying the cartridges.

I seem to remember reading something to the effect that this practice has been outlawed, at least in the UK. Maybe I imagined it.

[Airman_Doors_USAF]

It’s the [url=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razor_and_blades_business_model”]razor and blades model
[/quote]
. Once you buy the handle you’ll likely continue to buy the blades. This has been going on for a long time, and in cases like this where you are pretty much captured by virtue of your purchase they know that you’ll pay, because it doesn’t get better with any other company.

In fact, they have a specific reference in that article to printer ink cartridges, to wit:

This model may be threatened if the price of the high margin consumables in question falls. For example, computer printer manufacturers have gone through extensive efforts to make sure that inkjet printers are not compatible with cheaper aftermarket ink cartridges, such as designing the cartridges in a way that makes it possible to patent certain parts or aspects, or invoking the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. In Lexmark v. Static Control the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that circumvention of Lexmark’s ink cartridge lock does not violate the DMCA. On the other hand, in August 2005, Lexmark won a case in the U.S. that allows them to sue certain large customers for violating their boxwrap license.

[Airman_Doors_USAF]

Fixed link