Are printer companies ripping us off?

with toner?

[ganderla]

I have an HP 4100 and I got it with a slightly used toner cartridge. I have easily printed 20,000 pages before the low toner message came up.

I went out and paid about 130.00 for a new cartridge. Well I decided to leave the old one in until it gave out. I have gotten another 1000 pages out of it and it is still going strong.

Is this a conspiriacy to get me to buy more cartridges before I really need to?

[rogerd]

Well, if you've gotten 20K pages out of a partially used cartridge and it's still going, that sounds like a pretty fair deal to me. :)

I have an HP fax, and it lets me know early about low ink levels. I didn't act quickly enough this time, and earlier today I lost the last page of an important fax. (The mode of failure is to go from perfect print to nothing. Lasers usually fade or stripe.)

I'm sure they give you ample warning so that you don't end up stuck and unable to print.

[rmplmn]

20,000 prints for $130.00 is $0.0065 per page.
21,000 prints for $130.00 is $0.006 per page.

I can see your complaint. That extra 5 hundreadths of a cent per print is a total rip off! :-)

Frankly, you are getting excellent efficiency out of your printer and cartridge. The manufacturer's have got to draw the line somewhere and also allow for usage variances from one machine to the next. They don't all get that kind of mileage.

Speaking of mileage what really gets me is auto manufactures recommending service every 3,000 miles. You want to talk about a rip-off try going into your dealership for every recommended maintenance stop! :-p

[drbrain]

In all the laser printers I've seen the low toner message comes up before print quality starts to degrade from perfect. Its a warning for you to buy new toner and have it ready just in case you need to print out that 100 page report for a prospective client and you don't want to have toner fading across the paper.

[Raymond]

I don't see how letting you print another 1000 pages should be considered a ripped off. If my laser printer runs out of ink IMMEDIATELY after I get the "toner low" message, that will seriously piss our whole office off.

It is nice that the printer let us know early enough so someone can get another toner.

[PCInk]

Newer models of printers often flash the warning in advance of the cartridge running out, quite often when only 50% is left!

This is because (and I have had three jobs in the trade) customers consistently ring up and when you tell them their 'Genicom 9X20B' is not a very common machine and you don't stock their cartridge, that is not good enough for them: "I need one today!"

Secondly, cartridges quite often go into short supply. Try Panasonic at the moment or Canon i9950 Red and Green cartridges - nearly impossible to get hold of. An eight week delivery from Panasonic is deemed as lightning fast - six months is 'normal'. Customers do not see this as often as resellers - it has occured when some of the most common HP cartridges (selling 50 to 100 of each type per day in one company I worked at a few years ago) have gone into short supply and their stock of 2000, suddendly is down to 3 when the order eventually arrives! This happens quite often! The customer never notices, but the resellers do!

Never change your cartridge until quality deteriorates or the printer refuses to print. Order your cartridge when the warning appears.

[Reflect]

Also, if in a bind, if the print quality does start to degrade pull the toner cartridge and give it a good horizontal shake,. Afterwords you can still get quite a few more prints out of it.

Take care,

Brian