Cartridges that go bad after a set amount of pages regardless of the ink level. Quality of printing going down over time just so that a technician can reset a counter. High prices.
I thought that maybe the digitalisation of paper work had made the margins so thin that the only way to go forward was to resort to the mess that we have right now. But afaik the same was true 20 years ago.
In particular, there is some brand that was praised for consumer friendly practices here on HN that joined the dark side recently too; Brother iirc.
Most people I know "print at work", and they don't want to have a printer because when they did have one, the experience was atrocious.
People that do print at home, are mostly photographers that want physical prints of their photos.
I wonder if there's anyone here who worked in the industry and could provide some insight.
There were a few big problems with this:
- People often could buy a new printer, with supplies included, for cheaper than a new set of cartridges.
- The primary focus of new printer development was on eliminating as much cost as possible.
- Refillers and remanufacturers compete with the official supplies.
The result was an almost completely customer-hostile industry. Printers became worse over the years. DRM and write-only memory were used to try to stop refilling and remanufacturing. Expiry of the ink was considered a good thing, as it would force customers to buy more ink even if they had low usage.
While I was there, Lexmark sometimes made losses by selling too many printers. About a decade ago, they left the inkjet industry, which they had played a major role in wrecking. Laser has come down in price to the point that it has largely supplanted inkjet for light-duty use. The manufacturers in the home/small office laser market haven't been quite as hostile.
Interestingly, we're seeing a similar dynamic play out in the venture-backed startup world of the past decade. What's old is new.
Companies eventually started marketing higher quality machines, targeted towards power users with broader needs. But the era of the bargain inkjet printers seems to be pretty much over. Also, it took an entire generation, but we're finally much further along towards the paperless office/society.
Every time one stopped working (probably ran out of ink, or printed poorly because of long delays between printing) he would go to Best Buy, get talked up by a salesperson about a nice new printer, and buy it.
It's just incredible to see this story in action.
In a past life I worked at Best Buy, and the standard printer sales tactics were nuts. If a customer wanted to buy a printer, you were supposed to sell them:
He told me they weren't replaced because the fur killed them, it just wasn't worth replacing the inks since it was so damn expensive. It was always cheaper for him to replace the printer instead of replacing the ink, and because he never held onto a printer for much longer than a year he never bothered trying to keep it protected from the shop environment.
About the only think he ever printed was the occasional door flyer, checklists and general office paperwork, probably a single ream of paper a year at most.
A guy on FB marketplace was locally selling one brand new for $250 (and took $175 if I picked up same day), because his dad had one that ran out of toner so the father had just bought a new one. It actually came with the new receipts from Best Buy. Looks like BB upsold on lasers too.
Except, it's a low-end business class laser, and they last forever. This thing is great.
I had a friend who would actually do this -- every time they ran out of ink, they'd buy a new printer. I found out when I helped him troubleshoot something and saw 5+ different printer drivers installed.
After he told me about it, he opened the closet door to reveal a (actual) leaning tower of printers
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I have a relative that does this all the time. Personally, if it costs me more than it cost me to buy a cheap printer to refill it I will likely do the same thing. I just don't print enough to justify.
Related to the printing industry? (if so, I'd like to hear more)
Or do you mean in general?
I got a Canon laser printer 2 years ago. I guess I'm a boomer now.
Then I saw those videos about the printing industry scams (which does happen) and tried a third party toner that costs 1/5 of the price. Guess what? After like 10 perfect printed pages, it started leaking some powder, then stopped printing random chunks of the page and turned impossible to use.
I went back to the genuine cartridges and never left ever since. Also, the printing issues it had were identical to some issues I've had with public printers in libraries etc in the past. I guess that's because they're using those low-quality toners.
My department switched to buying toners directly from the manufacturer and reimbursing staff to get around the financial blocks that were put in to place. After two years they dropped the policy as a complete waste. We paid out so much money in repairs, new cartridges, new printers, and management that it made buying 'real' toner look cheap. Theoretically OfficeMax/Staples offered repair guarantees on their toners but of course managing those warranty claims is essentially impossible when you have thousands of printers scattered around.
Detecting scammy behaviour could be a leading indicator of an inflection point in a market or company where its growth phase is behind it. Printer companies are responding to paperlessness by hollowing out the goodwill of their customers, because there is no longer any long term value in it.
Agree this would seem like a good indicator.
The counterpoint is entire VC-backed industries that unnecessarily use scammy biz models from the start, e.g., requiring everything to be an internet-based "service", exfiltrating data and requiring subscription funding when it obviously is not required. Examples: robot vacuums, remotely-settable thermostats [0], security cameras [0], etc...
[0] No I don't need the full "service", at most I need a way to keep track of the external IP address of the device. If you want to offer the extra "service", fine, but it needs to be an add-on, not an obligatory dependency and cost.
The companies position themselves that way because they want to take advantage of peoples indifference to small subscriptions - because they know their products are objectively lame.
Printers have multiple times this complexity. And the products bought are bought for lowest price. Or at least reasonable price. You get what you pay for. And what is paid is often very little. Thus poor quality and need for other revenue streams.
I have a Dell small-business multi-function color laser and it's run like a champ for about 5 years now, with only one round of toner changes in that time. The only downside is that this particular model doesn't support cardstock or any thicker types of paper (~60lbs cover stock max IIRC).
But that's only been an issue a couple of times in the past.
Sure we do. A few years ago I looked for a list of the best printers (I used wirecutter, but there are other comparable options), and got one they recommended. It works great, even going a few months between prints, was easy to setup, and is still running great with just the toner it shipped with.
1. Even more so than cars?
2. Printers are also one of the few devices that need to measure liquid by the picoliter.
> products bought are bought for lowest price. Or at least reasonable price. You get what you pay for. And what is paid is often very little. Thus poor quality and need for other revenue streams.
This reminds me of the perennial discussion on airline quality. People comparison-shop by the sticker price, so the entire industry evolved into nickel-and-dime scams instead of having honest all-inclusive pricing.
The printer industry is horrible, but also HP is toxic at every level and across every product and service. Just avoid.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131
Their early 90s laserjets are still going. My friend's school was throwing one out a few weeks ago. It was sitting dusty in a closet. I plugged it in and it worked right away. Probably 30 years old.
They stopped making things like that a long time ago. They've got the resources and the public capital to turn the ship around if they wanted to
Don’t have a lot of brand loyalty but nice to see them not shit on their customers.
They do now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131
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And parents printing color-in pages of Elsa and Anna
I can relate.
I probably printed more coloring pages than anything with my printer.
If you only need to print a few times per year, it's far cheaper to buy a laser w/ toner. With inkjet, you'll have to buy (and wait for) new ink cartridges because they dry out in less than a year.
If you need to print a lot of color materials frequently and don't mind the quality, then ink jet is a better deal.
I had good luck with Oki printers (most of them come with Duplex unit, Ethernet and all OS support), a lot of people are very happy with Brother printers.