TERRORISTS SELL INK CARTRIDGES ?

[Anonymous]

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.

[Author]

November 14, 2005 at 10:16 AM