Murphy's letter from Edinburgh

 

The Real Price of Printing

You buy a great looking printer that has all the facilities that you require.  It's got a scanner, fax facilities, photocopying and all the other things that a modern printer is supposed to have.  You even get the cartridges that go with it with a limited amount of ink in them for immediate use.  The problems come a few months later when you go too buy  ink cartridges.

You find that the printer that you bought a few months ago has been changed with a newer model, and the shop that sold you printer has no ink cartridges for the model that you had bought.

I have spoken too many people that have told me that there are too many printers on the market with too many different types of cartridges.  Each company is churning out printers and changing the models far too often with different ink cartridges.  This has now become the biggest muddle in computing along with the price of the ink cartridges.

Why do we need so many different types of ink cartridges which basically all do the same thing when it comes to printing off the work that you have done.  And why are the prices so high for something that's essential for your printer to work?

It appears to me that a lot of shops are prepared to sell the printers that they are selling, but they are not prepared to stock the ink cartridges that go with the printers that are being sold.  And if they do sell the ink cartridge for the printer that you have bought it's for a limited period only.

I bought a good printer less than a year and a half ago, and already the ink cartridges have become hard to get.  It's not as if it's an unknown brand name, it's because they have brought out new printers since then with different types of ink cartridges.

What on earth is going on with these companies, and why do they need to keep changing the ink cartridges when one size could fit all?  And why are the prices so high for something that essential for the printer to work?

Of course you can fill the ink cartridge with a refill kit or by going to a shop that will refill it for you which is the option that a lot of people are now taking as they realise the prices they would be paying for a new ink cartridge.

When it comes to working out prices people are not so dumb, so they have gone for the option that will suit them best.  And if it mean filling the ink cartridge or getting it filled at a fraction of the cost charged for new cartridge then that the way things are.

The companies producing printers did the same with the dot matrix printer, and again the prices of the ribbon type cartridge were expensive, but again people found a way of getting it re-inked at a fraction of the cost.  It may have been messy, but you could save yourself a lot of money by using this method.

Is it not time for these companies to work together and a produce an ink cartridge that is compatible with all the printers that they make instead of creating so many ink cartridge numbers that only work with the model of printer that have created?

Of course printer technology has changed over the years and some ink cartridges do need to be changed, but the biggest majority of printers have two cartridges, black ink and tricolour.  So why should there be so many different ink cartridges when they all do the same thing that most people want them to do.

Is it not also time for these producers to reduce their prices a bit?  With a refill kit you can fill a cartridge at a fraction of the cost and the ink will do the same job, proving that it's all about the peripherals and the money that can be generated from them.

The cost of the ink is very little, so what are people paying for when they buy a new ink cartridge?  The ink cartridge which is made of plastic doesn't cost a lot to produce, so the whole pricing structure needs to be looked into properly to see if this has now become the great ink cartridge rip off.

Most people I speak too seem to think ink cartridges have become a rip off, and I tend to agree with them and that's why I now refill my own cartridges.

It's called cost effectiveness, and that may be something that some printer producers need to start working on.

Written by Andrew Murphy 29 June 2006

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