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Ask HN: Why is the printer industry so scammy?

by sbszllr on 8/31/22, 12:23 PM with 208 comments

• by acjohnson55 on 8/31/22, 12:59 PM

  I used to work for Lexmark, back when they were in the inkjet business. They are perhaps most notable for starting and fueling the race to the bottom in printer price. The theory was that if you could lock the users in, the customer lifetime value would be made on selling profitably prices supplies (i.e. the ink cartridge).

  There were a few big problems with this:

  - People often could buy a new printer, with supplies included, for cheaper than a new set of cartridges.

  - The primary focus of new printer development was on eliminating as much cost as possible.

  - Refillers and remanufacturers compete with the official supplies.

  The result was an almost completely customer-hostile industry. Printers became worse over the years. DRM and write-only memory were used to try to stop refilling and remanufacturing. Expiry of the ink was considered a good thing, as it would force customers to buy more ink even if they had low usage.

  While I was there, Lexmark sometimes made losses by selling too many printers. About a decade ago, they left the inkjet industry, which they had played a major role in wrecking. Laser has come down in price to the point that it has largely supplanted inkjet for light-duty use. The manufacturers in the home/small office laser market haven't been quite as hostile.

  Interestingly, we're seeing a similar dynamic play out in the venture-backed startup world of the past decade. What's old is new.

  Companies eventually started marketing higher quality machines, targeted towards power users with broader needs. But the era of the bargain inkjet printers seems to be pretty much over. Also, it took an entire generation, but we're finally much further along towards the paperless office/society.

• by leonidasv on 8/31/22, 12:55 PM

  Toner printers are "less scammy", at least in my experience. I had a HP one and always bought the genuine cartridges.

  Then I saw those videos about the printing industry scams (which does happen) and tried a third party toner that costs 1/5 of the price. Guess what? After like 10 perfect printed pages, it started leaking some powder, then stopped printing random chunks of the page and turned impossible to use.

  I went back to the genuine cartridges and never left ever since. Also, the printing issues it had were identical to some issues I've had with public printers in libraries etc in the past. I guess that's because they're using those low-quality toners.

• by motohagiography on 8/31/22, 1:37 PM

  Possibly, when a market or a business isn't growing, it's dying, so they make shorter term decisions that ignore conseqeunces and externalities the managers don't believe they will be around for.

  Detecting scammy behaviour could be a leading indicator of an inflection point in a market or company where its growth phase is behind it. Printer companies are responding to paperlessness by hollowing out the goodwill of their customers, because there is no longer any long term value in it.

• by Ekaros on 8/31/22, 12:54 PM

  Printers are the most mechanically complex computer related product. Just think, fans are basically single bearing and motor. Pumps are pretty much same. Traditional spinning disk, nearly closed system with two motors.

  Printers have multiple times this complexity. And the products bought are bought for lowest price. Or at least reasonable price. You get what you pay for. And what is paid is often very little. Thus poor quality and need for other revenue streams.

• by ironlake on 8/31/22, 1:27 PM

  My Brother black-and-white laser is about ten years old. Pretty low volume of use from me, but it's held up well and is one of the most satisfying technology purchases I've ever made. If it stopped working, I would buy a Brother printer tomorrow without even looking at other brands.

  The printer industry is horrible, but also HP is toxic at every level and across every product and service. Just avoid.

• by dn3500 on 8/31/22, 2:29 PM

  Where I live in Mexico nobody owns a printer. Instead there is a print shop on almost every street corner. You walk in, print wirelessly from your phone or laptop, or hand them a USB drive, and they hand you your prints made on an expensive office printer. They also scan and copy. And it's cheap.

• by progre on 8/31/22, 12:41 PM

  > People that do print at home, are mostly photographers that want physical prints of their photos.

  And parents printing color-in pages of Elsa and Anna

• by ekianjo on 8/31/22, 12:46 PM

  Laser printers are the way to go. They are typically for offices and follow a different business level: large volume printing and low-cost ink.

• by sshine on 8/31/22, 12:47 PM

  Home printers are like coffee pod machines:

  The money is made on the ink/coffee, and machines are pushed at a discount to dominate the ink/coffee distribution.

  The market is big and uncritical. Investing in high-quality machines is a long game that many can't justify and so avoid.

• by codepoet80 on 8/31/22, 1:15 PM

  Its a dying industry, trying desperately to scrape and claw the last remnants of revenue out of a dwindling customer base. In the fight for survival, they've all gotten mean and nasty. As others have said, stick to laser -- and preferably older models. I have a B&W Brother laser from 2007 that still pounds out the pages and needs new toner roughly once a year -- and happily takes aftermarket cartridges without complaint.

• by FerdSlav on 8/31/22, 3:25 PM

  A few years back I got frustrated with the unreliability and cost of my home printer and a friend suggested I pick up an HP LaserJet 4000N - a printer that came out in the late 90’s. After a bit of convincing I found one that was being thrown out and lugged the 50lb+ piece of yellowed 90’s plastic home. My friend provided a large jug of official HP toner, showed me how to fill the reservoir, and since that day I have not had to refill the toner or do any other maintenance - it has honestly been one of the most reliable and carefree pieces of my home network for 5+ years at this point.

  The 4000N is also a modular design with the ability to add attachments for things such as extra paper trays, auto-staplers, auto-folders, or networking cards; if that is your thing. I’ve have mine connected to my home network and have never needed an explicit driver or had issues using the printer from any of the major operating systems.

  If you are someone that only needs to print in black and white, and has the space, it may be worth checking out - I assume they can still be found for cheap/free as well

• by tootie on 8/31/22, 12:49 PM

  I think it's a natural part of industry decline. They've gradually migrated from an industry based on innovation and customer acquisition to one based on milking every last penny from their installed base. 20 years ago printers were critical business machines and very popular home electronics. The current generation is comfortable reading off their screens.

• by ValentineC on 8/31/22, 1:11 PM

  One "scam" that I realise HP is pulling: my OfficeJet 8710 printer seems to be cleaning its print heads every time it's turned on.

  I've gotten "please replace ink cartridges" messages when I've never even printed a single page since I replaced the previous cartridge — since I use the printer mostly for its ADF scanning function.

  Well, that's ~$100 I'll never get back.

  It's sad that the industry has moved in this direction.

• by jqpabc123 on 8/31/22, 12:48 PM

  Avoid ink jet and use laser jet instead.

  This solved most of the frustration for me. The upfront cost is slightly higher, the print quality is slightly decreased but the long term satisfaction is greatly enhanced.

  Ink jet in any form is dead in my mind.

• by scottLobster on 8/31/22, 2:38 PM

  Because mass-market customers by and large are cheap, stupid and easily parted from their money. If they weren't one of these companies would have figured out that producing quality printers/refillable ink cartridges makes more money, and consumers would avoid the scams. It clearly doesn't work that way. See also payday loans, sub-prime mortgages, most targeted credit cards (the cards are fine, but they target people they know have a higher chance to misuse them), food and alcohol in stadiums, the car rental company that tries to up-sell you from the Toyota Corolla to the more expensive convertible, etc. If you're in a mass-market business and not trying to scam people as much as possible you're leaving money on the table by definition. It's only when the scams are actually illegal that the risk becomes too great to tolerate, and even then some bet that they can get away with it.

  Also people are printing less than they used to. So much single-use paper is now a QR code on your phone or completely digitized. I bought 10 reams of printer paper about 5 years ago for home use, my family has worked our way through three over the years. When the kids get old enough I imagine the bulk of it will be used for school papers. On the business side we've seen a mass digitization of most documents, my company is steadily getting rid of the last of the old file cabinets as any relevant info in them is scanned/archived. So volume is less, and existing printer companies need squeeze more to maintain profits.

• by jmyeet on 8/31/22, 1:53 PM

  Not in the industry but the problems here are quite clear: it's a combination of short-term decision making and the way consumers make decisions.

  Cheap printers are sold at cost or at a loss. The companies make this up on ink cartridges. Obviously this creates an opportunity for third-party cartridges so your printer gets hundreds of firmware updates to try and defeat these cartridges and protect this business model. Ink is also wasted on things like cleaning the heads. This is by design.

  But why does this model exist? Because consumers make a purchasing decision based on the sticker price not the total cost of ownership. You see this behaviour all over the price.

  Why are their checked baggage fees, seat allocation fees, etc on airline seats? Because consumers make a decision based solely on the seat price.

  Companies like McDonald's sell the burger at about cost. They make all their money on the drinks and fries. You can view the burger as almost a loss leader. A bunch of other stuff happens here too, like the medium drink exists solely to get you to buy the large drink (ie it looks like better value).

  You should never, ever buy a cartridge printer. Ever. Instead, buy a tank printer. It's more expensive but you literally just pour ink into the wells. There's no firmware to stop you from doing this. It's much cheaper to run.

  All the software for this is terrible unfortunately. There's really no incentive to improve it. Sadly no company has yet disrupted this market and forced change through competition. There was hopes Apple might do this at one point. It obviously never happened.

• by ephbit on 8/31/22, 1:44 PM

  Haven't most companies that produce home electronics converged to device designs that guarantee steady revenue streams (as opposed to: sell once every 20 years devices)?

  By doing things like: opting for subscription models, short device lifetime, cross financing the device through asking high prices for commodities like the cartrigdges.

  I guess it's just more obvious with printers because you have this duality of the device itself _and_ the need for a steady supply of either toner or ink, which most companies abuse with nasty business models.

  I have an almost 20 years old HP b/w home laser printer (guess one of the first with USB, no ethernet). It doesn't copy/scan, it can only print.

  I don't use it much and it produces some minor artefacts but mostly works surprisingly well after so many years. The cheap toner costs like 10 USD or so and lasts several years with my usage.

  No printer company would design such a device nowadays anymore. Since it has no network access it cannot be updated to stop working.

  Many people want to print over network today and if I wanted to I could plug it into our router so I can print over WIFI.

• by beschizza on 8/31/22, 12:43 PM

  The razor-and-blades business model, in the middle of the Venn diagram of shareholder duty, consumable supplies and vendor lock-in.

• by lqet on 8/31/22, 12:55 PM

  I have a Brother b/w laser printer from 2012. It cost around 60 EUR. Never had any problems with it. It's build like a tank, has 4 status LEDs, and one button. I buy a new off-brand toner every 2 years or so, and that's it.

  Before this printer I went through multiple hp and Epson inkjet models. They were all horrible and usually broken after 2-3 years.

• by kojeovo on 8/31/22, 12:47 PM

  I haven't had printer issues at home in a decade now. Brother laser printer. So far have only replaced the toner once for $50

• by smiley1437 on 8/31/22, 2:15 PM

  Not trolling - but what are y'all still printing these days?

  I've literally printed 2 things this year, and one was a boarding pass (I like having a paper backup, call me old-fashioned).

  If anything, I've used the scan-to-email function on the printer about 10x more, and I could probably have gotten away with just taking a photo of the documents in extremis.

• by linsomniac on 8/31/22, 12:53 PM

  Why can't paper printers be more like 3D printers? Amazing repairability, many suppliers of standardized source material...

• by theandrewbailey on 8/31/22, 12:42 PM

  You should probably clarify if you're asking about inkjet printers.

  I bought a laser printer almost 2 years ago. No complaints so far, but we'll see how long that lasts.

• by gumby on 8/31/22, 1:53 PM

  A printer is capex (lasts a long time), but as a consumer device has to be low priced. So it’s hard to stay alive as a printer manufacturer.

  This is in no way a defense of the printer industry’s odious tactics! I’m just pointing out the situation that made unscrupulous people consider those tactics.

• by stuff4ben on 8/31/22, 1:34 PM

  > In particular, there is some brand that was praised for consumer friendly practices here on HN that joined the dark side recently too; Brother iirc.

  What did Brother do to join the "dark side"? I and lots of other folks love our Brother laser printers. I haven't heard of them doing anything evil...

• by ineedasername on 8/31/22, 1:54 PM

  Canon & a few other major brands have consumer grade MFP that use ink tanks instead of cartridges and you avoid this kind of hassle & get a much lower price on ink refills that you just dump into the corresponding color tank on the printer.

  This is what I use at home, a canon G-series printer. The "down side" of this is that the printers cost a fair bit more upfront. It's also not photo-grade quality. But with decent quality paper & high quality print settings it does just fine, and monochrome is no problem at all. I also don't consider the higher up front price to be an actual down side. I know I'm simply not getting the machine at a subsidy price, and in exchange I have to pay the true cost of the machine but have a much better user experience.

• by Mizza on 8/31/22, 12:57 PM

  Every time I have a frustrating experience with a printer, I spend the next two days imagining inventions to overthrow printer market, then I move on to over things because, really, who gives a shit about printers. I assume there are lots of people in this camp.

• by jve on 8/31/22, 12:57 PM

  People not recommending inkjet - I won't recommend them too.

  But there are ink tank printers available. I bought a cheap one, it doesn't have nice colors, but it has colors. And that printer doesn't need a refill for months (well, mostly printing for kids)

  I have HP Smart Tank 510 series. Altgouh I would recommend researching HP ink tank / Epson EcoTank / (other vendors may have different names), I don't recommend particular budget model I have - sometimes it is frustrating that it doesn't want to print over wifi. And that is my complaint in general, that I haven't been lucky enought to own "it just works" printer.

  But no, I haven't been familiar with issues you mention (technician?)

• by linuxftw on 8/31/22, 1:11 PM

  For a short while, I worked on office Xerox printers and scanners. They weren't particularly scammy, though they were expensive and the consumables were pricey.

  Home printers, yeah the ink is expensive. You're mostly paying for convenience. I don't print photos at home, we order prints online and they're mailed to us, very cheap and easy.

  What I print at home is strictly things I need to sign and bring to someone (or sign and scan/email). For that purpose, they work fine. I don't mind paying the price for ink, it lasts for a couple years before I need a new cartridge. I like the fact that I can still go to an actual store and buy ink for my printer if I need it on short notice.

• by JustSomeNobody on 8/31/22, 1:50 PM

  Nobody wants to invest in hardware alone. If you make hardware, you have to have some way of growing your income. Those quarterlies are expected to always rise. Now, it's hard to make devices more expensive because people will stop buying them (generally) or put off buying a new one for as long as they can. BUT, if you make the consumables more expensive, people will continue to buy those because they have too. Yay! Your quarterlies show growth. You're a hero! But wait, what if someone tries to undercut you by selling consumables cheaper!? THE HORROR! What do you do? Well, you start doing all sorts of fuckery. And here we are.

• by beej71 on 8/31/22, 5:26 PM

  From The Great Train Robbery (movie):

  Judge: "Now, on the matter of motive, we ask you: Why did you conceive, plan and execute this dastardly and scandalous crime?"

  Edward Pierce: "I wanted the money."

• by ggeorgovassilis on 8/31/22, 12:40 PM

  I think you touched all relevant points. Through my filter, there are either the "serious" customers (you mentioned them: offices and photographers) who are too smart to be scammed. And then there are private consumers who lack the knowledge to pick a printer and because they print only occasionally. I wonder if for the consumer market segment investing into a good printer is it even worth, considering that 2D printing at home is rivalled by many online services who print on far superior printers and deliver at home?

• by Jemm on 8/31/22, 1:41 PM

  All industries are scummy if you dig in to them. Capitalism is unchecked and people have been trained not to say anything negative for fear of being ostracized.

  Time for the tech community to declare a code of ethics and refuse to participate in corporate sociopathy.

• by cwoolfe on 8/31/22, 1:51 PM

  As others have said: The solution is to buy a laser printer; if you need color, order prints online or at your local drug store/print shop. I've had a laser printer for 10 years. It doesn't give me any problems. I buy toner once every few years. It'd be great if we had some regulation to pass along the cost of generated landfill waste to companies, so they'd think twice before making a something that's destined for the landfill after only 2 years.

• by rtorres1989 on 8/31/22, 2:03 PM

  I wrote a piece about why office printers in particular break down so much. One thing that stuck with me when I spoke to an IT repair guy was that users often cause more damage to worn out printers by trying to fix it. https://www.ciodive.com/news/perplexing-it-questions-answere...

• by idk1 on 8/31/22, 12:48 PM

  From what I understand, in the inkjet market the inkjet printer firms own the inkjet patents, which means it's not possible to disrupt the market.

• by KevinKallmes on 8/31/22, 3:12 PM

  This is one case where judge-made law has really impacted how business models are formed. Until 2017, the 'exhaustion doctrine' had Quanta Computers v. LG as its main precedent. Exhaustion is the point at which you have sold your patented stuff, and the consumer is using it as intended, so even though you maintain your patent on e.g. 'making/using ink cartridges', as soon as you sell them, the consumer can do what they want with them.

  Quanta left some unfortunate uncertainty: once a seller had created a product that "embodies the essential features of the patents", and sold it, exhaustion kicked in. However, the printer/ink industry still argued that part of the inventive process was the customer (who fully owned the cartridges and printer) putting ink in cartridges and cartridges in printers. This was not meant as much to sue consumers but to bully ink resellers.

  This all came to a head in the Supreme Court case Lexmark (linked below), on this exact question. In effect, the Supreme Court said "Once you sell the printer and ink, you're exhausted", under the argument that allowing Lexmark to sue ink resellers for patent infringement would clog commerce. They used probably the simplest argument in 'exhaustion' doctrine, the "first sale doctrine", which says that, once you sell your product, all IP around that product is exhausted with respect to that product.

  This can get very confusing, because exhaustion is NOT about the actual methods of making ink, but about when a specific product--the ink cartridge you found in your grandfather's basement--is totally outside of the manufacturers control. Thank god, the Supreme Court has made it a lot harder to claim IP infringement in 'downstream' commerce, and I bet that the printer industry is currently changing its "free printer but ink costs its weight in platinum" model.

  Not sure if there are other aspects of the business that make printer sellers inherently skeevy (the stories here tell me that it is part sleazy salesmanship, part lawyer-bullying), but this is definitely an industry that shaped its business model around using IP to threaten resellers so they could keep the margins on ink sky high.

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impression_Prods.,_Inc._v._Lex....

• by BeFlatXIII on 8/31/22, 2:40 PM

  Same reason the airline industry has universally garbage quality: customers comparison-shopping by sticker price and sticker price alone.

• by fjfbsufhdvfy on 8/31/22, 1:07 PM

  Bit off topic, but what printer would people recommend for someone who needs one every now and then, that is capable of color prints and scanning, that won't stop working when unused for several months?

  I'm getting the impression ink jet is not the way to go due to the long pauses, but the color lasers are all seem very expensive for such occasional use.

• by GekkePrutser on 8/31/22, 5:56 PM

  I think they're finally lightening up because of the environment.

  Every big brand now has a range of models with ink tanks you can simply refill. Even the official ink is not overly expensive.

  Of course the printers are more expensive but not crazily so. If it always had been like this we'd have had nothing to complain about IMO.

• by leemck on 8/31/22, 8:10 PM

  The genius of the printer business is printers can be programmed to fail and become unrepairable without breaking the law.

  Once the warranty period of the printer expires, it is not illegal withhold the service manual for a printer. It is not illegal to withhold the electrical schematic or operating temperature specification of the fuser. It is not illegal to withhold the details of the toner chemistry. It is not illegal to withhold the printer programming language specification.

  It appears to me that what is going on in the printer business (and the automobile industry too) is a deliberate push to make cars and printers consumer items.

  The other side of the printer business is a inkjet or laser printer ought to be able to work for 40 years. A little distilled water soak ought to fix any clogged inkjet. A couple rollers ought to fix any paper feed problem.

  One answer to Why is the printer industry so scammy is Consumerism in America is now in decline. Many commentors here, just like me have thrown a pile of printers in the trash.

  The last 30 years of printers that turn in to garbage is an irretrievable waste of potentially beautiful machinery.

• by h05sz487b on 8/31/22, 12:52 PM

  My laser printer is now over 10 years old. I bought toner 2/3 times I think. The only thing I needed to replace was one internal battery for a couple of dollars recently that was used to keep the time of the internal fax machine I never used, kept bugging me for the date.

• by dwt204 on 8/31/22, 1:48 PM

  A lot of useful insights that I will use the next time I need a printer. This comment is totally off topic- I have noticed the same thing about external cameras for my desktop computer. Never needed one until the pandemic forced Zoom et al on all of us. Any comments?

• by ianai on 8/31/22, 1:13 PM

  As a trend, huge profit margins incentive drastic behavior on either side of the market.

• by Tepix on 8/31/22, 2:10 PM

  I have an old Samsung color laser printer. Where can i find information on maintenance? The printouts have developed some stripes etc. I'm sure it's something that can be fixed, hopefully trivially.

• by Tepix on 8/31/22, 2:14 PM

  Noone here has recommended Kyocera. Their printers are a bit more pricy but from what I've seen they are not scammy. Get one with Postscript support so you don't need updated drivers.

• by js2 on 8/31/22, 2:16 PM

  Years ago I worked for a software startup that was acquired by HP. At some point after our acquisition, we had presentations from various directors. I'll never forget the presentation from someone in the printer division. He was gloating about printer ink sales, how the printer division was a cash machine, and then he made this arm-pumping motion as he verbalized the sound effect of a cash register drawer opening: "cha-ching." It was gross. Nothing from him about technology, or the HP way, or making the best printers, or solving customer problems. Just "how can we wring more cash out of people?"

  I didn't stay at HP very long. It was during the Mark Hurd era and it was a company being run by backstabbing sociopaths.

• by 97-109-107 on 9/1/22, 8:06 AM

  I'm surprised to not see anyone here saying how they are still sticking to dot-matrix printers.

• by nkotov on 8/31/22, 1:58 PM

  Laser is the way to go.

  We have a Brother color laser (AIO) printer from 2010 at my parents house that still gets a couple pages printed every couple of months. We replaced the toners perhaps 4-5 times in it's lifetime. The thing is built like a tank and weighs like one but works well. My only issue with it is that it doesn't AirPrint.

• by est on 8/31/22, 1:54 PM

  There's a great supply of cheap printer/cartridges in Chinese market.

• by jacknews on 8/31/22, 1:39 PM

  The ultimate problem is 'shareholder value' and the over-financialization of everything. Of course in a capitalist market economy you need to make profit.

  But it should not be the only thing; Society requires goods and services for people, and incentives should be aligned to society's goals, not finance's goals.

• by controversial97 on 8/31/22, 3:36 PM

  I mostly either go use the big nice printer at my hackerspace or use a website that usually gets documents to me in the mail two days later, printed perfectly at up to A0 size.

  Print by mail works out cheaper than printing at home for my very occasional use.

• by immibis on 8/31/22, 2:19 PM

  All industries are like this.

• by johnea on 8/31/22, 10:41 PM

  Because they can be. Who's going to stop them?

  This question further reinforces my belief that most people really haven't internalized the motives and means of modern capitalism.

  You can answer many questions like this by referring to a crude old southern homily:

  "Why does a dog lick his balls?"

  The very widely applicable metaphorical answer:

  "Because he can."