OFT and Trading Standards investigate Lexmark

According to a number of industry bloggers, Lexmark is under investigation by both the British Office of Fair Trading and the Trading Standards Institute after a firmware update was released that prevents third party and refilled inkjet cartridges from being used in Lexmark printers.

A number of consumers have reportedly complained to the two advisory bodies after noticing that the latest firmware update for their inkjet printers prevented them from using cartridges that were not Lexmark originals.

However Trading Standards told The Recycler: “we don’t deal with investigations into businesses”, and that it may be the case that a local authority is separately dealing with the complaints against Lexmark.

When contacted, the Office of Fair Trading stated that it does not give out any information about ongoing complaints against companies and Lexmark declined to comment.

This issue has serious implications for the aftermarket – the OEM seems to have made a move towards shutting its printers and cartridges off from remanufactured and refilled cartridges. However, taking this step may also land Lexmark in serious trouble with the British authorities for cutting off its aftermarket competition.

The OEM has been involved in a series of moves that may suggest it is trying to shut out the aftermarket, including patenting an anti-remanufacturing device, and contesting a longlegal trial with Static Control over the past few years.

Samsung has alsobeen criticised for updating its chip technologies in an alleged attempt to block the use of remanufactured cartridges in its printers.

Have you experienced this issue first-hand? If so, please comment.

Our recommendation is that you take this seriously and avoid buying one of these products for the time being.  We have long suspected that this practice has been going on.  It is the only logical way to explain the behaviour of a number of printers rejecting 3rd party cartridges  brought to our attention by customers.

Check out my post of July last year, “Cartridge Alert for Epson Printers“

It is beyond me why any sane person would purchase a low price Epson printer.  Not because they are no good, they are a really nice product but due to the cost of actually using one.  In other posts I have suggested that using third party cartridges or copies is a good way of reducing the cost, providing you purchase good ones.  Here at Fillink we do sell the good ones and a delivery of new stock arrived today.  The sneaky little electronic chips Epson use to make it difficult to make these products have until now been vanquished by the version 5 circuits on our third party cartridges.  This new delivery however has version 6 chips.  This can only mean that our suppliers have got wind of the fact that, either new Epson printers will not accept version 5 chips or there is an updated driver now available that renders version 5 chips unusable or worse, both.  Beware, do not update the driver for your Epson printer and do not purchase version 5 chipped cartridges for your recently purchased printer.

The most common current Epson cartridges on the market today by far are the to711, to712, to713 and to714, black, yellow, cyan and magenta.

Most of our Epson customers use them.  Cartridges of this type are able to contain a little under 20ml of ink.  A year ago we noticed that they only contained 14ml and recently only 7.4ml in the black and 5.5 in the colour.

This means that Epson has been stealthily increasing the price of these cartridges without you noticing by reducing the amount of ink.  Typically they cost around £12 each.  Compare this to ours containing 19ml at £5 and you can see just how much you are being ripped off.

Inkjet printers waste a lot of ink. The following video from youtube illustrates this beautifully. The conclusion is not quite correct however. Some printers waste more than others. We have found that HP and Brother printers are by far the most efficient in their usage of ink, only using a few percent in their maintenence cycles. Epson and Cannon printers can waste up to half of the ink you purchase. There is a way to reset this Epson problem for free with some clever software you can download from this blog.  Click here to read the info.

How much does 1ml of ink cost?

The answer is a lot!  However did you know that the cost can vary greatly for the same printer?  In another post I suggested that using the XL type cartridge if you can would save money.  Here is the shocking truth.  HP produce great products and they are the leaders in terms of inkjet market share so why produce 2 different cartridges for the same printer, don’t they make enough money already.  The 350 cartridge costs £14 on their website.  It contains only 4ml of ink so each ml costs you £3.50p !  The 350XL will aslo work in the same printer and it costs £29 for 25ml of ink so each ml costs you £1.16p.  That is quite a difference, £3.50 vs £1.16!  Other manufacturers are also doing this.

I think I know which one I would purchase.

This post is not just about printers but electrical goods in general. In the UK we should recycle our old TV sets and fridges etc. I thought that all kinds of things had been put in place to achieve this until I saw the following shocking film on TV the other night. Printers must play a part in this so I feel this subject is close enough to us to publish the information. We have even been approached by people asking for old worn out printers. I did not know what they were up to until now. Be prepared to be shocked when you watch the footage below. There is a delay of about 15 seconds that I cant get rid of when you press play. Please be patient.

Dell have announced the launch of their range of “Nextlife” inkjet cartridges and have described them as ‘industry changing’ as if they are some innovative product. I have never heard a bigger heap of hyped up balderdash in all my life.

Nextlife are a range of remanufactured cartridges for 70% of HP, Canon, Epson, Lexmark and their own Dell printers. Their marketing material claims that you can save ‘up to’ 20% and print ‘up to’ 20% more when compared to branded cartridges.

Granted the packaging is made from 50% post consumer waste and is 100% recyclable but the ‘up to’ is just legal speak for ‘may not be as much as 20%’.
This approach is more environmentally friendly than purchasing new cartridges every time but…..
why would you use this product instead of the multitude of much cheaper, reliable products that have been available for years?

Get this, Dell printer owners. You purchase your dell printer cartridge, on-line as you can’t get them in the shops, then when it is empty you send it back to Dell. They then refill it and sell it back to you for only ‘up to’ 20% less than the price you have already paid for it. Sounds like money for old rope to me.

I wonder what Lexmark have to say about this bearing in mind that they manufacture Dell inkjet printers and the cartridges !

Invariably in this world I find that if something looks too good to be true it generally is.

That’s just how it is for printers.

How do they sell a really good all in one device for £40?

Where do they make a profit?

On rip-off cartridges of course.

Please don’t be mislead by enticing sales material.

Call us before you make a decision.

Even if you don’t purchase one of our printers we’ll happily advise you on what to avoid and what’s good.

Recently one of our customers brought us a Canon printer, only about 3 years old.  The print quality was poor and we traced the problem to the print head being worn out.  This does happen eventually, these parts don’t last forever.  Fortunately this type of part can be replaced in a Canon printer but when I attempted to order a new one for this gentleman, I discovered that it had been discontinued.  I could not find a supplier who had stock so this customer had a perfectly good printer and no way to keep using it.  What’s going on Canon?

There is no such thing as a cheap printer.  You may think you have found a bargain for around £40 but don’t do it.  Find out what cartridges the printer takes and how much they cost.  Then look up the page yield you can expect.  Divide the cost in pounds by the yield and you get the cost per page.

Beware, as a rule of thumb the supposedly ‘cheap’ printers on the market cost the most to run!

Don’t consider anything with a page cost of over 2p for monochrome.