Ask HN: Why is the printer industry so scammy?
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.
212 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 259 ms ] threadDunno, unless you're looking for larger formats most print shops will not have printers superior to decent home units like Epson SC-P900
Some models have 12 colour cartridges, each costing more than a budget printer.
I wouldn't say photographers can avoid being scammed, because the industry is basically an Epson/Canon duopoly with HP as a somewhat distant third choice.
So competition is very limited, and unless you're bulk-buying printers and ink for a huge print shop there's no leverage to negotiate prices down.
And parents printing color-in pages of Elsa and Anna
This is from experience designing/operating photo booth kiosks based on dye sub printers.
I can relate.
I probably printed more coloring pages than anything with my printer.
I bought a laser printer almost 2 years ago. No complaints so far, but we'll see how long that lasts.
There you go, DIY AirPrint
The android brother plug in sucks and I wish google cloud print was still around. I tried mobility print but it didn't quite work as expected and decided to just stick to printing from my laptop.
I'm guessing that either one of their firmware updates broke their chip DRM recognition, or the chips that were in my original toners somehow corroded due to age.
Even for laser printers, it looks like it will be compatibles and refills for me moving forward.
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.
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.
The money is made on the ink/coffee, and machines are pushed at a discount to dominate the ink/coffee distribution.
The market is big and uncritical. Investing in high-quality machines is a long game that many can't justify and so avoid.
Some years ago Walmart had a HP printer on sale for so cheap that it was more expensive to replace the ink than to get a new printer.
It does take longer to shave with a safety razor since you need two or three passes but its a better shave with a lot less pain afterwards and its an insane amount cheaper.
This solved most of the frustration for me. The upfront cost is slightly higher, the print quality is slightly decreased but the long term satisfaction is greatly enhanced.
Ink jet in any form is dead in my mind.
OK but they still stop updating the drivers after 3 years, which is the main problem. Otherwise they would last forever.
Good printers use PS/PCL, nobody cares about drivers, a generic one usually works
That's heavily understating it.
If I want display quality photos on heavy weight paper, I go to WalMart or Office Depot and pay for their commercial printer. For small photos embedded in business documents on plain paper, my Canon laser jet does an acceptable job and is relatively frustration free at reasonable cost. Text quality is never an issue.
Ink jet and photos are the main pain points to avoid.
I recommend looking for "office" instead of "home". The manufacturers seem aware of the fact that business people have low tolerance for unreliable crap.
IPv6 completely locked it up. It would reboot over and over. This happened after changing my home router to one with full ipv6 support. Disabling ipv6 on the printer fixed it. It could be that subsequent firmware updates fixed this but I haven’t checked.
I use only genuine HP toner. No way I am trusting random toner from the flea market—er, Amazon.
HP Color Laser Jet MFP 281cdw
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.
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.
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.
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.
Before this printer I went through multiple hp and Epson inkjet models. They were all horrible and usually broken after 2-3 years.
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.
But there are ink tank printers available. I bought a cheap one, it doesn't have nice colors, but it has colors. And that printer doesn't need a refill for months (well, mostly printing for kids)
I have HP Smart Tank 510 series. Altgouh I would recommend researching HP ink tank / Epson EcoTank / (other vendors may have different names), I don't recommend particular budget model I have - sometimes it is frustrating that it doesn't want to print over wifi. And that is my complaint in general, that I haven't been lucky enought to own "it just works" printer.
But no, I haven't been familiar with issues you mention (technician?)
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.
As an aside, my grandfather was a terrific guy. He bought a Gateway 2000 PC in the 90's and spent lots of time with me getting Sim City 2000 loaded up on it. He always had some gadget to show me since he knew how much I loved technology and he was very good at it for someone of his generation. I don't begrudge recycling 11 printers as I cleaned up his house and it always gives my dad and I a good laugh and nice memories of an important person in my life.
The most common electronics I see being thrown out these days is some shitty inkjet printer. Unlike a CRT or computer nobody wants them and so they sit by the side of the road for several days.
Printed at a print shop, paid 50cts for the prints and $3 to use the computer for 10min trying to print from USB drive
Printed at a library and for the printer could only pay in cash and there was a long line.
I've had a broken HP inkjet on my desk for 10 years. The only reason I've hung onto it is because it makes for a very nice network-connected document scanner. I got it used from one of my spouse's parents, and I haven't ever even tried to print with it. I keep thinking about replacing it with a multifunction laser printer, but why bother? I only ever really need the scanner.
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:
When I started I had just left commission-based sales in electronics at Sears and I was amazed at how much better Best Buy was at pushing accessories with big ticket items.
At Staples they also told us something about better USB cables for faster, more reliable printing.
How bad does your existing USB cable need to be before it starts to cause your printing to fail? Stop running it over with your chair.
It's nice to see the market drive bad practices away through competition.
We use plastics because they can be moulded into any shape in seconds. Aluminium is used for premium products instead of steel because it's easier to manufacture into shape - you can cut an aluminium beam as large as your arm with a hacksaw in a minute or two. If that was structural steel, you would batrely make a dent in hours. This reflects on wear of cutting and shaping equipment in factories too.
Stainless steel is the king of materials, but a bitch to work with, that's why you only ever see simple shapes made out of it.
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.
I think that was when the local print shop either shut down or was too backlogged for my dad to get his business cards done in reasonable time so he used print-at-home business card sheets for a bit to tide him over.
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 got a Canon laser printer 2 years ago. I guess I'm a boomer now.
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.
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
Related to the printing industry? (if so, I'd like to hear more)
Or do you mean in general?
I'm getting the impression ink jet is not the way to go due to the long pauses, but the color lasers are all seem very expensive for such occasional use.
I've gotten "please replace ink cartridges" messages when I've never even printed a single page since I replaced the previous cartridge — since I use the printer mostly for its ADF scanning function.
Well, that's ~$100 I'll never get back.
It's sad that the industry has moved in this direction.
Home printers, yeah the ink is expensive. You're mostly paying for convenience. I don't print photos at home, we order prints online and they're mailed to us, very cheap and easy.
What I print at home is strictly things I need to sign and bring to someone (or sign and scan/email). For that purpose, they work fine. I don't mind paying the price for ink, it lasts for a couple years before I need a new cartridge. I like the fact that I can still go to an actual store and buy ink for my printer if I need it on short notice.
I _wish_ printers would die. I've hated them with a passion ever since I've had my first job as a computer "operator" where I had to feed and align perforated paper forms to monster IBM printers. The boundary between electromechanics and software is a very dirty place.
The printer industry is horrible, but also HP is toxic at every level and across every product and service. Just avoid.
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
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
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131
Would also buy a new Brother without even considering other brands. Sad to hear it might be going downhill as well.
What did Brother do to join the "dark side"? I and lots of other folks love our Brother laser printers. I haven't heard of them doing anything evil...
Now, to override the alert Brother gives you when it THINKS you are out of ink, I have user Allegra to thank for that as follows:
"Go to the buttons and follow these instructions:
MENU > GENERAL SETTINGS
Press the down button (minus sign) until you get to REPLACE TONER
Hit OK
Please the down button (minus sign) until you see CONTINUE
Hit OK