DUE TO CURRENCY … HP IS SCAMMING AUSTRALIAN CONSUMERS

[Anonymous]

http://www.smarthouse.com.au/Home_Office/Printers_And_Multi_Function/B3H3T9V5
DUE TO CURRENCY HP IS SCAMMING
AUSTRALIAN CONSUMERS
Hewlett Packard the world’s
largest maker of printer and printer inks is charging Australian
consumers more than double, what US consumers pay for a Hewlett Packard
(HP) 02 Ink Cartridge Value 6 Pack.Back in January 2008 when the
Australian dollar was hovering around the $0.85 cents to the US dollar,
Officeworks was selling a Hewlett Packard (HP) 02 Ink Cartridge Value 6
Pack for $49.95.That same HP Value Pack is now $89.96 despite the dollar
rising to $0.93 last week.

In the USA Best Buy is selling the
same Hewlett Packard 02 Ink Cartridge Value 6 Pack for US$39.99 or
A$43.00.Last week Hewlett Packard Australia launched a major radio and
print advertising campaign in Australia, warning consumers of the perils
of buying non HP ink. They have also invested millions into
establishing their own ink police force in Asia in an effort to catch
organisations that are manufacturing counterfeit HP ink which is selling
in some Australian stores for half the price of the genuine HP inks
sold at Officeworks.

HP are claiming that to avoid excess costs,
spillage and waste consumers should purchase, high quality, reliable HP
Original Ink & Toner Cartridges that work every time to provide the
“best quality and value”.What they don’t tell consumers is that they can
buy the same ink from US web sites for half the price.Recently Best Buy
in the US said that they will now start shipping to International
consumers via a US address. This allows freight Companies and third
party organisations to take delivery of the Best Buy products and then
on ship it to Australia.Research done by SmartHouse reveals that the
cost of freight to Australia adds approximately $10 to the US cost of
the advertised HP Ink which combined with a purchase price of $43 makes
the US purchase $36 cheaper than the advertised price for HP Inks in
Officeworks.At the time of writing this story Hewlett Packard had not
responded to our request for an explanation of their Australian pricing.

http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/28084/why-is-printing-so-expensive
UK:Why is printing so bloody expensive?
According to HP Media Test Expert, Thom Brown, the cost of
printing has come down 30% in the last three years. The average user
will get through 3.8 ink cartridges each year which works out as a cost
of $6 per month. It’s a good way of rationalising it but 30% or no 30%
it still feels like bill shock every time we have to we have to play the
replacement game.  The real trouble is that few of us ever thinks of
the purchase of a printer as a subscription or a model with significant
running costs. So, for those who can’t take the pain at the checkout,
Pocket-lint went over to HP’s ink factory in Dublin to find out exactly
where all that money goes.

The process of printing is like
dropping grapes into a bucket from the top of a 30 story building at
speeds of 50km/h and at intervals of 30,000 times a second. We’re asking
those cartridges to make single dots on a page from 32 separate
super-heated vapour explosions but yet be cool enough by the time they
arrive to be dried and in good condition. And all of that through a
nozzle just one third the breadth of a human hair. If the droplets are
not the exact right shape, the lines on the documents on the photographs
will become blurred and raggedy, the contrast poor and the images far
from sharp. And if the results aren’t good, then the consumer will blame
the printer manufacturer, so it’s small wonder that they put so much
into the production of the cartridges.

There’s a holy trinity of
printing between the machine, the paper and the ink cartridge but out of
them all it’s arguably the cartridge that’s the hardest working of them
all. The ink comes into contact with both the machine side of things as
well as the paper too. The paper itself is specialised to some degree
with a choice between porous and swellable technologies – you can ask us
about that one another time – but the cartridge has become such a piece
of work that more often than not these days, it’s even the place where
you’ll find the actually printing head which was previously always found
in the machine.

The engineering and assembly that goes into each
cartridge is certainly more than you’d expect especially when standing
there with your bill shock face. As well as the tiny nozzle, each one
contains a sponge and a filter as well as the ink. The sponge is there
to ensure that every last drop of ink is soaked up from the cartridge
container but is not so greedy that it starves the nozzle. The filter is
7 microns in size and is designed to block whatever impurities that may
have got in there that could clog up the nozzle and ruin the drop flow.

The
cartridges are filled in a vacuum to make sure they’re up to the brim
and, once done, the lids are placed on top and ultra-sonically vibrated
against the main body until the two heat up and fuse together. The heads
themselves are made from an incredibly thin film and held down by the
inert and rather pricey metal Palladium to make sure that they’re
perfectly in place. Each cartridge also has its own unique ID chip to
make sure it’s gone through all the quality control and, if there is a
problem, it can be traced back to a particular batch.

But of
course, it’s not just the plastics where all the money goes. A huge
amount of the expense is concerned with the ink itself. Each new ink
takes around 3-5 years to develop. The fluid dynamics are selecting for
viscosity, anti-smudge factors, quick drying and colour permanence to
last years of exposure to light. The droplets are examined under
electron microscopy for size, shape and speed to make sure they’ll give
that perfect image reproduction when required.

It’s small wonder
that manufacturers like HP recommend using their ink cartridges and no
one else’s when it’s time to change them over. Sure, a significant part
of their business is the ink cartridge money spinner but it’s easy to
see how a refill of their specially engineered hardware could produce
some very patchy results. The new ink is not going to have the same
viscosity which will give a dramatically different performance but, more
than anything else, the cartridges simply aren’t designed to last for a
second life cycle. Many of the parts such as the delicate filters and
nozzles might well have worn out. HP describes refills like second hand
cars. There’s just no guarantee that they’ll run properly.

Thankfully,
you can buy into a printer type and system where new cartridges cost
less. You can make the choice whether you’d rather spend more on the
outlay or pay higher running costs but, for now at least, shelling out
for new cartridges is a part of life. From an eco point of view,
companies like HP are crying out for us to send back the empties so that
they can recycle them. 70% of the new ones are made from the plastic of
the old. But, until they run a decent incentive schemes to help with
further ink purchases, it seems unlikely that many people will
bother.So, until then, you’ll just have to remember these facts the next
time your printer runs dry and it’s time to stump up the cash again.
You won’t like it and it’s still not cheap but at least you’ll have a
better idea of where the money is going.

[Author]

November 6, 2009 at 11:46 AM