The Inkjet Refill Racket

Came across an old but rather informative article at Popular Science on inkjet refills. To summarize it, at up to $8,000 per gallon, inkjet ink is by far among the most expensive liquid in the consumer market today - far far more expensive than gasoline even with the huge increase of recent days.

Basically, inkjet printers are the new razors of today. Printer manufacturers practically give away the printers - heck, they are being bundled for free with computers. Then they gouge you every time the ink runs out. Since ink cartridges are not universally compatible, you are pretty much stuck shelling out the equivalent of $3,000 and $5,000 per gallon of ink whenever you buy your printer's manufacturer's cartridges. (That's how HP's imaging and printing group accounted for 40% of HP's USD2.63 billion profits from the last quarter alone.)

It is not surprising therefore the printer manufacturers has taken the offense against low-cost generic refill cartridges via lawsuits and installing chips on both their printers and cartridges that prevent the use of other brands. Similarly, the manufacturers have also made it much more difficult for consumers or third party service providers to refill their cartridges using generic ink.

The article does put things in sobering perspective, doesn't it?

Source article here.