I had to buy a printer recently. I intentionally went through all the information i could to find out which manufacturers pull this trick and bought their competitor instead.
this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023
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Can you share what competitor you bought and some of your findings?
I didn’t have a wide array of choices, as I had a selection of printers in front of me at a brick and mortar store, but I went with the Brother HL-L2325DW. They offer a subscription (I don’t mind an optional convenience and monetization method) but they don’t disable your printer or force you to buy it.
It came with a full sized toner cartridge at about 3,000 pages compared to the “demo cartridge” most printers will give you with the unit, and it worked out of the Box with CUPS and Linux, and was supported by Brother for Windows and Mac.
Wildly enough there was a Linux utility too from Brother, but I didn’t need it.
Brother is the only non-evil company when it comes to printers. Every other printer company would literally stomp on your puppy given the chance.
+1 for Brother HL printers. 2 toner bars got me through 3 years of nursing school.
If I need something printed in color, I'll just let a professional do it.
And it's extremely easy. Upload the PDF, wait for your mail. Thanks. The last time I needed something printed in colour was years ago, and the money and hassle I saved myself by buying a monochrome laser printer isn't offset by this one print job I had to pay for.
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They've got color laser printers too, just bought a HL-L3290CDW last week to replace my roommate's cheap Canon printer that I got tired troubleshooting every time we needed to print something. Absolute monster of a print device: color laser printer+scanner+copier+fax machine and a seamless printing process to boot.
Funny, I knew it was going to be a Brother from your first post. Glad to see the confirmation. I still have am HP from like 2016 which they started doing firmware updates to lock ink to their official brand only so I couldn't buy 3rd party. I had to roll back the firmware and removed the default gateway address to keep it from getting out to the internet and possibly updating again. I have made 1 3rd party ink purchase and been using it ever since. Printer works great still. The day it breaks will be the day I stop using HP going forward. I still can't believe they pulled that, and now this.
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If you need a inkjet printer buy one with an ink tank. Like Epson’s EcoTank line. Much cheaper in the long run, since 3rd party refill bottles are super cheap.
This shouldn't be allowed. I hate products in 2023.
I have a 12 year old laser printer that I got for $3 from a garage sale and I'm riding this baby into the ground. Every year or two I get some generic toner for about $15.
Exactly. I wish the Soviets made laser printers because then I'd get one from a car boot sale and it would probably outlive my grandchildren
I'm wondering if there's a open source firmware for printers like openwrt for routers
Edit: typo
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Can't believe this is legal.. is there seriously a subscription model even if you've bought a printer? Does this happen with all hp printers?
It's worse than it sounds... You're not actually paying for ink, you're paying for pages, in a similar context to how you used to pay for minutes for your cell phone.
A buck a month gets you 10 pages printed, 100 pages printed a month sets you back $6/mo, and so on.
The ink is shipped "free" when your cartridge runs out, and naturally, they figured out how to increase the ink capacity in the carts to be much higher than the ones they sell, so shipping a cart out will be much less frequent if you're ponying up for each page you print.
Odds are it'll be cheaper over the life of your printer as long as you're a member of the residual income brigade...
Jeez… with that you might as well do as I do and just go to Staples and print from there. No need to buy a machine or paper and it’s cheap.
Wow, you could have your documents printed at the professional copy/print store for a lower price per page.
Why is this video on a porn site?
aint you never watched halo noscopevids on porn hub? reliable, robust, usually pretty anonymous video hosting breh.
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is there a printer that ISN'T a scam???
Just buy from Brother. They're not over priced, reliable, and don't pull with nickel and dime shit.
I've had my laser printer for 16+ years without issue. And everyone I suggested get a Brother as well have all been happy.
I updated my Brother printer just for it to decide to stop detecting my off-brand ink. They're not free from bs.
I bought an Epson ecotank that I haven't had issues with
They don't make their money back on the ink cartridges and instead price the printer as a printer actually should be
Think ink has lasted me for a while but I'm personally not using it everyday to print
The ink isn't cartridges but it comes in bottles you can buy to refill ink tanks on the printer
If I have any issues then I will update my recommendation but the printer has been good for me personally
I have a canon ink tank printer and haven’t had to refill the ink tanks in 3 years. I don’t even know where they are. I print a lot of knitting patterns and workbook type stuff, but not often. Still, when I do use the printer, I use quite a bit of ink. I’ve been really happy with it! I think most printers with ink tanks are going to be a good bet, but I have never seen an HP printer function correctly after the first print or two. I won’t pay them any attention, let alone buy an HP printer. I’m convinced HP is single-handedly why printers have such a bad reputation.
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Brother laser printers.
If the printer costs less than or barely more than an in cartridge, it's a scam. If you want a non scam printer, it will be more expensive. And never buy HP.
I've had pretty good look with Brother HL printers. I bought an HL-2170 around 2008 and it's still works great.
Work with commercial sized inkjet printers. They are all scams even at that level.
Laser printers. HP has been trash forever. I honestly look down on people who still buy inkjet printers. It shows they have no ability to think about future costs.
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Buy an ink tank printer. They don't know what ink you are pouring in
So you bought a printer with a subscription service and you were then suprised when it stopped working when you cancled the sub?
Well yeah I mean it's a shitty service but... why would you buy a printer like that?
This is why I am hesitant to buy a printer, I‘m still using a 10+y old laser printer. Only thing I miss is printing from Wifi, but hey, I‘d rather dig this thing out of the closet and connect with USB each time than be forced to make an account.
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I mean that's a really shitty thing for the environment, but I thought when you sign up for their ink subscription, you authorized them to lock any remaining ink if you ever cancel. The reasoning is probably to discourage people from cancelling right after getting a new cartridge and being able to use a full cartridge of ink. Might be unethical, but not illegal.
If the business model doesn’t allow them to have those situations written off as a loss leader then they need to reevaluate the business model.
The vast majority of the people should forget to cancel and the cost should be enough for you to manage, for some of your customers to get amazing Utility from your service, and for most of your customers to consider your service so valuable they couldn’t think to get rid of it, even if they don’t utilize it fully.
Disney offers meal plans with your vacation. Most people don’t use all the benefit, some people do, and even less people manage to eat at all the most expensive and prestigious places for their meals because they knew how to utilize their benefits to their maximum potential.
Same with game pass, Amazon prime, and basically any prepaid service. The whole thing is balanced to be enticing, convenient, and potentially a massive value prospect to keep people in that golden spot of FOMO so they buy in and not cancel, but not such a great value that you cannibalize your other monetization streams.
Here they made it apparent that it’s not a good value, there is no situation where i can come out on top, so instead of losing on my monthly sub, they also lost unit sales and any good memories and associations I had with their products and services in the past.
There are plenty of things that aren’t illegal but are counter to your intended goals.
Edit: sorry for the wall of text, you caught me with lots to say I guess.
That's a good way of putting it, and it says a lot that they would happily take a loss if it means that there's no chance you could get an edge over them.
There are printer ink subscriptions? And here I thought, ink printers couldn't get more annoying (dried out every time I wanted to print, cartridges costing as much as the printer itself).
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