F*k you, Epson
c. 2011 Michael St.Mark
( Collage with inkjet print cartridges, spilled ink & fineline pigment ink on formica & paper )
It has to be exposed, the great inkjet cartridge scam – a classic example of misuse of new technology by the large corporations to entrap and then force the public into buying own-brand refills at extortionate prices, while toothless government retail watchdogs stand by and … watch.
LONDON DADA 
I guess you should transfer your loyalty to HP then. Here check it out xerox phaser.. Might as well help you out.
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I deliver ink to the big boys and I used to throw it about on the back of the truck until one customer told me that the little box I was abusing cost £600.00, my heart skipped a beat, it ain’t just ink though, we’re being ripped off at every level, the trouble is that the masses are leaving school now little more intelligent than morons so the government will be able to do as it pleases with little intelligent opposition.
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Yeah Mr B. , they’ll learn the hard way poor sods, all they know is the virtual slave camp that is post-Thatcher Britain. Mind you a fair % of their parents likely voted CON @ some stage.
What goes ’round….
btw what do you make of the crab dispenser vid’ on the previous post? Id be interested to know.
Hope your recent appointment went well.
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Thank you that last line Mike, I’ve been a bit worried lately but the surgeon said that I’ve got pristine (His words not mine) innards so that pleased me, I’ve got to see him next week for a histology report but I think I’ll be ok, still got the problem though so we’ll see.
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Try internet-ink.co.uk I have been using their compatible inks for ages now without any problem. You also get more ink per cartridge than other makes. Next day delivery if you order early and they are a lot cheaper.
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Cheers for that SB, will check it out … still I think even the clones r v. expensive for what they are.
Someone’s making a crock of money out of tiny amounts of ink in small moulded plastic boxes.
The inkjet cartridge industry, a licence to print( pun intended ) money.
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l agree with all that’s been said here about Epson [etc] ink cartridges, they are an extortionate price. l recall quite a few years ago when my son was at secondary school and i bought him a computer and printer [which came together in the same box] from Tesco so he could do his schoolwork on it. The printer was a Lexmark and we didn’t know then how expensive the ink cartridges were or i would never have bought that computer package. l think this was also a scam, that when you bought the computer package you were fobbed off with a printer that used ink which ended up costing more than the printer! ——so as you say Mr St.Mark F*K you Epson!
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Epson are the cheapest but Tesco’s own brand are 50% cheaper. HP were the worst. It also pisses me off when you buy a new printer that the cartridges that come with it are a quarter full. Why go to the effort of that? They do themselves NO favours at all. It is a total rip off. It’s a well know fact that printer ink is is more expensive than petrol and infact gold ounce for ounce. To paraphrase your inference, they can get fucked. Why print anything these days when everything can be copied onto an iThing or laptop and carried around?
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Yes Mick, there are cheaper replica brands but the big boys are getting further ahead of the game with each new generation of printer & registration software. The chips on the own-brand ink cartridges are also being developed with ever-increasing sophistication that are more difficult to clone. The latest printers’ software can detect if the customer is using refills or clones and receive a download from the company to cause the printer to stop working.
And the prices of the new cartridges, as you say, are stratospheric – £8 each. Most printers use three primaries of Cyan, Yellow and Blue plus black so that’s over 30 quid just to refill a printer that in some cases cost less than that to buy new.
Many people still print stuff out, myself limited-runs of various DVD labels, sometimes amounting to 100 a week. Its getting to the stage where I have to adjust the settings to print with maximum bright onto white to save on ink. The labels are getting to be more costly than the DVDs, or the DVD cases.
Its a giant swindle and a con, they must be making a total fortune out of millions of PC owners, most of whom use a printer in combination.
Latest trend is people looking to buy older refurbished printers that take cheap refills without kicking up a fuss.
Moral of the story could be think twice before upgrading to any big corporation’s latest new product, the chances are you’ll be suckered in to being forced to pay more in the end.
F*k ’em, we fight back 😉
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Mick; I’ve worked out why the cartridges supplied in new printers are only quarter-full. I checked out Spirit Bird’s suggestion of the Internet ink site and found they haven’t yet brought out any cloned ink cartridge copies for my new Epson printer… apparently it takes several months for their boffins to replicate the chip on the cartridge, and as mentioned the big manufacturers are making them progressively harder to clone with each new model.
So. The sooner the ink already supplied runs out the more people are going to have to buy replacement cartridges before the cloned ones are ready and therefore forced to dig deep to pay for the own-branded.
But I doubt whether Epson/HP/Canon etc would admit to that devious tactic if questioned.
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Wow, I didn’t know about this. It’s really aggressive marketing. I got fed up with Windows for the same reason and moved to Linux. Where do these people get off? I refuse to be a slave.
Thankfully, I rarely print anything (nothing at all in the last three years) so it doesn’t affect me too much. I’m relatively paper-free. Bad news for those who do use a printer, though.
Good post – I enjoyed it. Thanks.
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