Inked!

Colour me irritated. I was in sales for years and years, and rightly or wrongly I feel that that should immunize me against most of the marketing ploys that fool ordinary people. I know a pitch when I hear one; I recognize an alternative close when one is casually lobbed at me; I know how to give a closed answer to an open question, and vice versa. I never believed that old saw that salesmen are the easiest people to sell to. And yet…

In the olden days, when Gillette invented the safety razor, they sold them at a very low price. Almost every man could afford one. They sold like hotcakes (actually, I have always wondered why cakes have to be hot to sell well. I have bought a number of cakes over the years and as far as I can remember, they were all cold). Why, people wondered, were Gillette selling their new patented safety razors at such a give-away price. Well the answer of course was that once you had the razor, you needed periodically to buy blades for it, and that was where Gillette made a killing.

These days most of us use disposable razors, so the tactic of giving away the razors in order to sell the blades no longer applies – or at least, not to the art of scraping off the face fungus. But it exists elsewhere, and I have recently fallen victim to it. It was not completely unexpected. We all know, I think, that you can buy an inkjet printer for your computer at a fairly reasonable cost. Unless you want a top of the line model with all kinds of bells and whistles that most of us don’t really need, you can pick one up for a price that will leave you with some quite healthy change out of a hundred dollars. Where the printer people make their money is from the ink cartridges. My late father bought a very good printer some years ago, only to discover that new colour ink cartridges would cost him about 75% of cost of the printer. Needless to say, he determined only to print in black and white, which is probably what most of us do, most of the time. I hardly ever print in colour.

Anyway, my old printer died the death a few months ago so off I went down to Best Buy one warm and sunny Saturday afternoon to get a new one. Naturally, the model I had become used to was by them obsolete and no longer offered for sale, so I took a long look at the various models on offer and bought what seemed like a good printer/scanner/fax for a price just north of sixty dollars. I was actually rather pleased with myself. Included with the printer was a set of ink cartridges; a black one of course, and three colour ones. Now previously I had been used to having just one colour cartridge in my printer, but this one required separate cartridges of cyan, magenta and yellow ink. Ok, I thought, I won’t be using them more than once in a blue moon, so that doesn’t really matter. I go the box home, opened it, set up the printer on my desk, and did a couple of test prints.

It was then that I read in the book of instructions that even if you set your printer to print in black only, a small amount of coloured ink will be used in each printing. I have no idea why that should be, other than to make you use up ink. Sure enough, every time I printed something, with preferences set to “black only”, I could see from the animated chart that popped up each time that the ink levels of the three coloured cartridges was slowly dropping. I won’t mention the brand name, in order to protect the guilty but they had set it so that
Even
Printing
Seldom
Or
Never in colour, you had no alternative but to use ink from the three colour cartridges.  

I told myself that it didn’t matter, because when the colour ones ran out, I wouldn’t bother to replace them. That would show them! In fact, they showed me. One evening, halfway through printing a run of a dozen pages, the machine stopped and showed me a graphic of the cyan cartridge with a big red X across it and a warning that it was now completely empty. And – now here is the fiendish bit – the printer wouldn’t operate at all until I replaced it with a full one. Bastards!

Naturally this was late at night, so I couldn’t go anywhere to get a new one just then. Next day I took the empty cartridge to our local Walgreens, where they have a cartridge refilling service but of course my brand of ink cartridge was the one brand Walgreens didn’t service. So, I had to buy new ones. Three new ones in fact – I replaced the cyan, and I am at least ready for the imminent demise of the current magenta and yellow ones.

To be honest, the actual printer is pretty good, and the scanner is excellent (I expect the fax part of it is good too, but I have never used it). I’m just annoyed with the company for this marketing ploy, and even more annoyed with myself for falling for it. I say again: Bastards! Bastards and mug!
.

Comments

[samulli]

That stuff is one of the many reasons why I will never go back to inkjet printers. I treated myself to a laser printer a year ago and inkjets now seem like dinosaurs to me.

Those damn ink cartidges annoyed me no end, because they were either drying up or leaking all the time. Especially if you don't use the printer every day, or even every week, ink is just impractical. Not to mention that the printout looks so much neater with laser printers (no more smears when you print several pages at once).

Also, the cartidges for laser printers seem to last pretty much forever. Mine is supposed to last 3000 pages and even though I printed A LOT over the last year, I can't see any sign that it's getting anywhere near empty.

I'm actually a bit annoyed with myself for buying 2 more cartridges for it a couple months ago (when I caught them on sale), because that means I will keep using that printer at least for the next 2 - 3 years. And as much as I am loving the thing, I was kinda hoping to trade up to a color laser next year.

[Rasmenia]

I wish I had known that you were going out to get a new printer, I would have told you about the problem that I've been having for the past few months with the printer that my in-laws gave to me.

I've been having this problem:

Even
Printing
Seldom
Or
Never in colour, I have no alternative but to use ink from the three colour cartridges.

Yes... the SAME! I hate this thing. It's only redeeming quality is that I got it for free, but we've been sinking money into cartridges for months & I never print anything in color.

We tried using other cartridges, but of course, the printer freaks out unless we use the name brand cartridges.

When we finally cave in & replace this stupid thing, we'll be going the same route as Samulli & will invest in a laser printer.

[Darla M Sands]

It is insidious. My husband bought a do-it-yourself refill kit. Best wishes!

[Jazz Music]

That is pretty crazy, you know? It happens to many of us though.

[fake designer handbags]

Even
Printing
Seldom

[Mo Bradley]

It is really frustrating if you ran out of black ink, as the printer would mix your 3-coloured ink cartridge to produce the black one. What I do is to always check the ink level. There are also online ink stores that sells quality generic ink that would save you money and also time.

[Tracy]

I had the same experience! I only ever buy plain black ink printers now. Stuff the colour !