qwertydude
Printing Ninja
- Joined
- May 7, 2009
- Messages
- 522
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- 89
As it goes with Canon they keep trying to circumvent refilling as if their lives depended on it. It's the same to a much lesser extent to Epson. But HP seems to be a little friendlier to refill, at least for their tri-color and black printers. Does anyone else here think HP may have gotten the business model right?
My theory is HP doesn't mind the refillers because refillers make up only a small percentage of printer users. Canon really wants to just stick it to refillers even if it's just .5% of the population. Which after talking to a bunch of my college classmates it ends up being that low a ratio. So HP let's people refill and press ok and ignore low ink warnings. In fact it's so easy it's almost encouraged by them. And I think I see why. You can refill one time with almost guaranteed success as long as you're not a penny pinching bastard and press ok after the low ink warning. But run it out after that because the cartridge usually isn't reset by the small time refillers, and voila print head death and you're forced to buy a new cartridge. At most HP only lost 1 cartridge sale, but the general population thinks they saved a bunch with that one refill. With a burned out print head they can't easily be remanufactured so it keeps the number of reusable cartridges available down for the remanufacturers. HP wins on both general good will from the population, they get a slightly reduced profit margin but guaranteed resells after the print head is burned out, and remanufacturers don't have as much of a selection of good cartridges to refill, and knowledgeable refillers are happy just topping off cartridges. Win, win, win for HP. Loss for remanufacturers. Genius.
My theory is HP doesn't mind the refillers because refillers make up only a small percentage of printer users. Canon really wants to just stick it to refillers even if it's just .5% of the population. Which after talking to a bunch of my college classmates it ends up being that low a ratio. So HP let's people refill and press ok and ignore low ink warnings. In fact it's so easy it's almost encouraged by them. And I think I see why. You can refill one time with almost guaranteed success as long as you're not a penny pinching bastard and press ok after the low ink warning. But run it out after that because the cartridge usually isn't reset by the small time refillers, and voila print head death and you're forced to buy a new cartridge. At most HP only lost 1 cartridge sale, but the general population thinks they saved a bunch with that one refill. With a burned out print head they can't easily be remanufactured so it keeps the number of reusable cartridges available down for the remanufacturers. HP wins on both general good will from the population, they get a slightly reduced profit margin but guaranteed resells after the print head is burned out, and remanufacturers don't have as much of a selection of good cartridges to refill, and knowledgeable refillers are happy just topping off cartridges. Win, win, win for HP. Loss for remanufacturers. Genius.