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from the terrorists-and-organized-crime-oh-my!
Who
knew the printer ink business was so nasty? It’s well known that
printer companies make their money on the ridiculously high margins
from selling the actual inkjet cartridges – and not the printers
themselves. This is why they work hard to convince people not to buy
third-party ink cartridges. In some cases they even try to force you to
only use their own ink cartridges. Lexmark is even suing a company that
reverse engineered a chip that forces their printers to only use their
ink. However, beyond third-party ink cartridges, there is (apparently)
an even bigger problem for the printer companies: counterfeit ink.
Apparently, a relatively large percentage of ink cartridges sold that
appear to be legitimate cartridges are actually fakes. They are often
found online, but they’re increasingly showing up in retail
establishments too. While I’m sure the scary warnings about these
cartridges (they’ll break your printer! they’ll come half full! they’ll
spray ink everywhere!) might be true in some cases, a lot of this
article appears like FUD from the printer companies. They even go so
far to accuses terrorists, along with organized crime, for running the
counterfeit operations – though, when pressed, they admit they haven’t
been able to establish the terrorist link. The real issue is probably
that the printer companies are charging too much for their ink
cartridges (these days, a single ink cartridge replacement costs almost
as much as the printer itself). There wouldn’t be quite the same market
for counterfeit goods if the printer makers didn’t artificially inflate
the price so much.
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