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At the low number of pages printed at home, I don’t mind buying the actual name-brand toner. If you’re only changing it every 2 years, the cost doesn’t matter m
by orev 5y ago
At the low number of pages printed at home, I don’t mind buying the actual name-brand toner. If you’re only changing it every 2 years, the cost doesn’t matter much, and at least the company (i.e. Brother) gets some profit from being a good citizen. Going with non-OEM toner in that situation just drives the company into needing to find more revenue streams, such as locking down the cartridges, which undermines you. At some point people need to be willing to pay a little more to a company that treats them with respect.
- discreditable 5y agoI switched to OEM toner after using up some generic stuff I'd been working on for two years. It's barely more expensive and it was nice they included a prepaid shipping label for me to return the used cartridge to them.
- tsimionescu 5y agoHow about they make their money by selling a good printer? I don't have to buy has from my car company if I want a good car.
- vlovich123 5y agoWould you rate the typical car buying experience as one that’s fair where the customer generally isn’t taken advantage of?
- throwaway09223 5y agoIn terms of vendor lock-in on the fuel supply? Yes absolutely.
- kube-system 5y agoIt’s has historically proven difficult to sustain that model because the consumer printer market for the past 20 years has been race to the bottom. It’s hard to compete when competitors are selling their printers at or below cost. Consumers mostly tend to make their purchase decisions on the margin, and so the razors-and-blades model works well. I guess there may be a few recent exceptions to this like the Epson Ecotank, although I don’t know how profitable that has been for them.
- lotsofpulp 5y agoBrother has been selling solid printers and software for as long as I have used them, which is 15+ years.
- kube-system 5y agoI agree, and I have a couple of them myself. But they’re not the ones cranking out the $20-$50 inkjets that litter the shelves at Walmart/Best Buy
- kaladin-jasnah 5y agoWell, the EcoTanks are pretty expensive to begin with. They also have some colour quality issues that requires you to waste ink to like… recalibrate every so often, or something thing like that? But most of the time, it's fine, and the ink is cheap.
- kube-system 5y agoAll of the inkjets on the shelf would have similar prices to the EcoTanks if they weren't sold at or below cost and subsidized by their cartridges. It costs HP/Canon at least (if not more than) $49 to build a $49 inkjet all-in-one.
- pepoluan 5y agoIn my country, it seems inkjet printers with tanks are quick replacing printers with cartridges. The reason being people in my country don't really care about warranty, would go out and buy a cheap cartridge-based printer, then bring that printer to some hack shops that will "convert" that printer into a tank-based one, allowing you to use any third-party ink. So manufacturers keep absorbing loss on their lower-than-cost printers and couldn't make a profit from ink sales. That's why cartridge-based printers are slowly being phased out for ink tank printers... So manufacturers can grab profit directly from printer sales :-)
- sagarm 5y agoI'm using a 10 year old Brother with the starter toner. Still going strong, but I haven't given Brother a cent since I bought it for $100. Can they survive off that? Hopefully.
- noasaservice 5y agoOne purchase does not give a company the rights for all future purchases. If their business model assumes that, their business model is faulty.
- ikerdanzel 5y agoRare companies doing that these days. At least Brother and Epson seems to be decent. Canon and HP really need to reconsider their tactics otherwise it will damage their brands for decades to come like that famous computer brand that outsource support to India which affected the sales and then pull out from public listing to private.
- maxerickson 5y agoI put a piece of black tape over the window on my Brother starter toner like 4 years ago. Print quality is still good enough for anything I print at home (which is obviously very little).
- spicybright 5y agoWhat does this do?
- maxerickson 5y agoThere's a sensor that checks the toner level. The tape tricks it into thinking the level passes instead of not passing. I don't remember if it just stops the printer from complaining about the level, or if it refuses to print with a low level.
- zdragnar 5y agoHides the fill level from the optical sensor. They can be rather pessimistic about the quality of print that you'll get at lower levels.