EPSON & LEXMARK's LATEST CORPORATE GREED

[Anonymous]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Corporate-Greed-Comes-To-C-by-Ernest-Steadman-080601-24.html
Corporate Greed Comes To Cyberland
At
the age of 61, I’m certainly not as old as many readers of these
editorials. But, I think I have more unique life experiences than most
of our senior readers because at the age of 16 I was left the sole
support of my mother and six brothers and sisters. Thankfully, it
happened in the rural Deep South where a man was accepted as a man by
his deeds and the responsibilities he had. When the family car gave
out, at the age of 17, I bought my first car from a Ford Dealership on
credit. I remember the owner telling me about having to pay a 97%
Federal income tax. Yes, 97%. Some years later, President Kennedy, in
order to boost the economy, lowered the highest tax rate to 72%.
Remember?

I remember the recession of the 60’s. South Florida
was particularly hit hard when Cape Canaveral was almost shut down and
thousands lost their livelihoods. One fellow offered one of those old
southern mansions that was just off the Melbourne Causeway, not half a
block from main street, for the princely sum of $25,000, sitting on a
whole acre of commercial property complete with a two bedroom caretaker
cottage on the grounds. The house itself was probably four stories high
with ceilings of at least 12 feet in height, loaded with ornate wall
and ceiling sculptures. Good, decent homes that once sold in the $30’s
now sat vacant with signs lowering the price, in some instances, to
less than $10,000.

It was a time when the United States left the
Gold and Silver Standard and overnight, while people were loosing their
homes left and right, gold shot up from $35 an ounce to more than
$1,000. Silver rose from $6.00 an ounce to somewhere around $35.00. If
you had a dollar bill that had a Silver Certificate on the back of it,
you could easily get $5.00 for it from just about anyone.

It hit
everyone and every industry. Two industries in particular reinvented
themselves; tires and batteries. When you went to buy a tire, it
clearly stated whether it was a 2 ply or 4 ply tire. One could reason
that a 4 ply tire was better because it had twice the rubber that a 2
ply tire had. Then, suddenly, a 2 ply tire became something else, it
became a 2 ply tire with a 4 ply rating. Truthfully, there was a time
in America when it was safer to ride on tires that had been recapped
(tread added to an older tire) than it was to ride on 4 ply rated
tires. The battery industry did the same thing. You no longer could
determine the Amps of a battery. What they did was go to a “Cold
Cranking Amps” rating. In that way they could reduce the amperage by
about a third and still claim the product to be as good as before. It
wasn’t.

Remember the recession of the late 70’s? Anyone remember
what industries were most affected? The automotive industry for one.
Look around. How many late 70’s and early 80’s automobiles do you see
still traveling the roads or, for that matter, in someone’s collection
of antique autos? Just about NONE is the correct answer. The standards
were lowered so much that things like transmissions and motors had a
usable life of maybe 10 years, if that.

Now, America once again
is facing yet another recession. Yes, a recession. When a common worker
can no longer afford to take his family 60 miles up the road to have a
picnic in the park or in the forest, when groceries (I’m referring to
the kinds of foods that working people eat) go up more than THIRTY PER
CENT in one year, we are facing a recession. When independent truckers,
not too long ago, would haul goods for $1 a mile now must pay nearly
that much in fuel costs to travel that same mile, we are headed into a
recession.

But, have no fear. Some corporations who cater to the
home print industry have come up with a unique way to not only insure
the purchase of their after-market wares, they have found a way to
compete and take business away from the very retail outlets who sell
their wares to the general public. I am specifically referring to
Lexmark and Epson. What they have done is embed a chip into every
inkjet printing cartridge for their printers that tells the printer
when to change the cartridge. Before that, when the cartridge ran out
of ink, you knew it was time to change it with another or to refill it.
No more! The program they have come up with remembers the unique chip
and refuses to reuse it, even if it is refilled.

I can’t speak
for Epson, but with Lexmark you get only three choices when a cartridge
gets low of ink (determined by the printer program, not by you);
replace it with a new one, order a new one from the Lexmark website or
cancel your print job. Lexmark even has the program to the point it
reports back to them on the way you use their printer, what kind of
printing you do and how often.

Under the guise of “saving the
planet”, Lexmark has a cartridge exchange program where if you buy all
your cartridges from them, for every four that you return to them in
their postage-paid envelope, they will give you the fifth one free,
undercutting their retailers by 20%.

As to refilling any ink
cartridge, to make it affordable, they replied to me, “Inkjet
cartridges and printer failures caused by refilling or a third party
ink are not covered by your Lexmark Printer Warranty, Extended Warranty
or Service Agreement.” In other words, if you don’t buy their
cartridges, you don’t have a warranty. They fail to say that their
printers simply will not work except with a brand new cartridge
supplied by Lexmark. I’ve used their printers for the past 10 years, 4
of them, and never had a problem with a refilled cartridge. I did wear
two of the printers out but also gave two of them to young relatives
who had just acquired their first computer. Now all of a sudden, with
this new printer, there are new rules and I don’t think it has anything
to do with warranties or equipment failure but everything to do with
raising their “bottom line” at the expense of their customers and
retailers.

Hewlett-Packard said that although they do not like
for their customers to refill their cartridges, “HP has not programmed
printers to be unable to use refilled cartridges.” I’m still waiting to
hear from Pitney-Bowes and Brother, but I think they will have about
the same reply as did Hewlett-Packard. It’s an industry “thing”. If I
buy a new car, I’m going to be told what kind of motor oil to use and
if I don’t it will void my warranty. But, they don’t tell me what brand
it has to be or from whom I can buy it. When I buy a suit of clothes,
I’m not told when, where and under what conditions I can wear them. No
one is going to invade my privacy and follow me around to insure that I
do what they tell me, except in the case of Lexmark.

I don’t
know about the rest of you, but if this fails to go industry wide in
this recession and I had stock in either Epson or Lexmark, I don’t
think I would be keeping company with them for too much longer.

[Author]

June 3, 2008 at 11:03 AM