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Investing and Economics Blog

Save Money on Printing

Unfortunately some companies think the way to make money is to try and con their customers out of cash. Certain industries seem to prefer this tactic: credit cards, banks, printer companies… To avoid rewarding them for behaving badly read: Take That, Stupid Printer!

It refused to print a thing until I replaced the cartridge. But I’m a toner miser…
But my printer’s pages hadn’t been fading at all. Did it really need new toner – or was my printer lying to me?
…
To find out, I did what I normally do when I’m trying to save $60: I Googled. Eventually I came upon a note on FixYourOwnPrinter.com
…
covering the sensor with a small piece of dark electrical tape tricked the printer into thinking he’d installed a new cartridge. I followed his instructions, and my printer began to work. At least eight months have passed. I’ve printed hundreds of pages since, and the text still hasn’t begun to fade.
…
many Hewlett-Packard printers can be brought back to life by digging deep into their onboard menus and pressing certain combinations of buttons. (HP buries these commands in the darkest recesses of its instruction manuals

You can believe what I am sure would be arguments by the companies for why breaking customers printers is helpful or you can save money and the environment by realizing that printer companies are notorious for trying to manipulate customers and use the internet to find ways to protect yourself and the earth from such abuse.

Related: Price Discrimination in the Internet Age – $8,000 Per Gallon Ink – Kodak Debuts Printers With Inexpensive Cartridges – Zero Ink Printing – HP Poor Service – Industry Standard?

August 21st, 2008 John Hunter | 2 Comments | Tags: Personal finance, Tips

Comments

2 Comments so far

  1. When Companies Can Treat You Like an ATM, Many Will Do So » Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog on August 29, 2011 5:58 am

    […] if your goal is to maximize company profit it is easy to see how you would develop a system that rips off the customer (very expensive part replacement, huge text messaging fees…) and attempts to capitalize on […]

  2. Add Constraints to Processes Carefully » Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog on November 23, 2016 11:44 am

    […] for companies to use those “features” against customer. So you have companies like Hewlett-Packard for example has a long history of intentionally breaking customer’s printers using “features” no customer would […]

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