On September 17, HOP, the French association against planned obsolescence, on the basis of a courageous law that came into force two years ago on this subject, took HP, Canon, Brother and above all Epson to court with these specific accusations: having deliberately shortened the life of printers and cartridges. As? With a system that blocks printing because the ink cartridges would be completely empty.
It's not true, because if you look inside them there's still some left (difficult to verify, a lot). And the same thing always happens through blocks specially put in place for the drum too, for the toner which gives bad prints even if it is not finished at all. And it is consequently changed well before necessary.
The results of these planned obsolescence operations? That users print several copies fewer than the machine and its components can actually print. The multinationals win and the consumers lose.
And if the defense apparatus of the powerful multinationals puts forward the whole concept of the subjectivity of the concept of duration (much depends on how the printer is used…etcetera etcetera), the HOP association together with other French consumer defense associations, Europeans, Americans, Asians, his tooth is poisoned because – everyone says – there is more to it than planned obsolescence: the cartridges and the drum have exaggeratedly high prices.
Often the drum costs more than the printer itself. And this applies to all brands, all in the sense of the few remaining ones. Prices of printers and spare parts are very similar, and this would appear to resemble an oligopoly. We note that printers, ie hardware costs less and less, and that performance tends to be less and less satisfactory.
But the decidedly high earnings (euphemism) that come from the sales of spare parts compensate these apparently so unprofitable prices in a very satisfying, broad, profitable way.
A piece of advice: do as HOP did: contact a good repair technician and have the background of the programmed obsolescence of printers explained to you. He opens one, takes out the four components that are there (few, cheap, of indefinable quality) and explains "why" users are forced to replace them well ahead of time.
Source: “Paula's house".
NOTHING will change until manufacturers are FORBIDDEN BY LAW to include systems for the exclusion of competition - i.e. proprietary chips - into consumable components (cartridges, used ink containers, etc.) and "black lists" with which to exclude competitor spare parts.
In fact, these are the systems with which these swindlers FORCE consumers to buy either original consumables at crazy prices or to throw away the printers. HP and Epson are the most perverse in this regard.