Mangetout for President!!!
Congress ought to forget fighting unwinnable battles like Social Security and tackle issues like this. Seriously. It’s a great idea to print such information for consumers.
Today, I happened upon a little shop selling after-market inkjet cartridges. The replacement for the Epson c84 is $9.00! So Epson is making a ton of money on these damned cartridges. Just for the sake of comparison, I priced an eguivilent printer: it costs (after rebates) a total of $75.00. If I had to buy a complete set of ink cartridges (black and red, blue, yellow(, the total cost is $84.00!
I guess you should throw your printer away after the initial ink cartridges are empty!
One thing I really hate about my Epson printer is the way it handles an empty cartridge. If my yellow cartridge is empty, it won’t just let me print in black and white. I think there’s some bullshit about how it mixes the colors and the black to acheive a richer black. But I don’t really care about that, especially when it’s 4 am and I have to print out a paper due the next morning. I wish there were some setting where I could just print in black and white.
(stirring the fire some more)
You folks do know that the printer manufacturers put extra-little ink in the cartridges that come with their printers, right? Like about a third as much as the replacement carts?
Hmmmm, a genuine HP replacement toner cartridge for my IIIp on eBay for $15 plus $10 shipping. At 3500 sheets per cartridge that means a per-sheet cost of about SEVEN TENTHS OF A CENT! That’s versus 500 sheets out of a $39 cartridge, which works out to a per-sheet of about TEN TIMES AS MUCH!
Suckers! 
Epson doesn’t do this.
They did it with my printer. I think it was one of the selling points, even: “Look! We’re going to give you ‘starter cartridges’ with 1/3 of the ink in a regular cartridge. For free! Woo!”
Huh. One of the selling points of mine (C84 and CX4600) was that they came with regular cartridges. I was told that by an Epson representative in the store, and the contents list on the box mentions “one cyan ink cartridge (T044220)”, etc., so I could walk down the aisle and make sure that was the same cartridge they sell as a replacement.
Incidentally, the boxes for both printers say how many pages the cartridges are good for (presumably the CX4600 uses lower quality by default for B&W printing):
I’ve gotten fond of wishing that people like you that you get exactly the kind of treatment you’re defending from every merchant you do business with. Here’s my vision of what part of a day would be like for racinchikki
**racinchikki **walks into a convenience store whistling, grabs a generic soda from the cooler and walks to the register.
Clerk: That’ll be twenty-three dollars please.
racinchikki: Twenty-three dollars! It say’s forty-nine cents on the bottle!
Clerk: That’s the manufacturer’s suggested price, we chose a different one.
rc: That’s outragous, I’m not buying it.
Clerk: Very well, that’ll be eighteen dollars.
rc: What?? What is eighteen dollars for?
Clerk: There’s a five dollar restocking fee, a three dollar service fee, and a ten dollar fee to the RIAA. We are entitled to make as much profit as we can and we’re not going to do it selling forty-nine cent soda.
rc: I don’t have to pay anything!
Clerk: Oh yes you do, by opening the door you agreed to our user agreement, that’s what the grey letters on the silver handle say. The full text is on the web, it’s not our fault if you chose not to read it before comming in here.
rc: What’s the ten dollars to the RIAA for?
Clerk: You were whistling a song under copyright, you have to pay royalties, and a penalty for not getting prior consent.
rc: Wait, don’t I have to use it commercially to owe money?
Clerk: Your whistling clearly drove people away from the cooler, leading to your direct tangible benifit. Plus, you’re rendition was bad enough to lower the value of the song as a whole, you can’t expect the band to just eat that loss can you? Are you going to pay or not? Please don’t make me call security, he’s expensive and you will be charged.
racinchikki walks out and returns to the job of selling ink. Racinchikki’s boss comes over to chat.
Boss: Good news, you’re getting a twenty percent pay cut!
rc: That’s good?
Boss: Good for the company, more profits for the shareholders. Unemployment is up so we determined we can pay seventeen percent less and keep employee churn at managable levels.
rc: But I have a contract…
Boss: The contract is nullified at any time by either party, didn’t you read it? Care to sign this new one?
rc: How come you’re cutting me twenty percent?
Boss: Our psych profile told us that you’d suck up an extra three percent without quitting, care to prove us wrong? Isn’t this great! Think of the profits we’ll be making. We’ve got a move in congress to get rid of those pesky remaining work rules and when that happens we’ll make even more! Sure, paying you for eight straight hours may have made sense when people ran machine for eight hours straight but look at your job, most of the time you just loiter. Soon we’ll be able to pay you only for the time you spend talking to customers, it’ll take you forever to get up to eight hours. Then think of the profits…
I bought three rounds of knockoff replacement inkjet cartridges for my Epson from Ebay for the same price it would have cost me for one round of the Epson cartridges.
Now every time I print in color, my software advises me that I’m not using a genuine Epson cartridge and do I want to continue?
It’s a slight pain in the ass but everytime I click “yes” it further cements my resolve to never buy a genuine cartridge again.
Foible, I agreed that the ink pricing scheme is annoying, but I don’t think it’s criminal. I’d feel free to shop elsewhere if I were so treated. I’d also feel free to buy offbrand printer cartridges if I were so treated. I don’t think it’s necessary to get the government involved or prosecute.
I bought “knockoff replacement cartridges” for a C-80 I had and they ruined the printer. The damn ink was not viscous enough and it just seeped out all over the inside. What a mess. Maybe your experiences have been better but I will never buy non-Epson again.