Ridiculous but true - Printer/supplies price ratio

Don't you find ridiculous that a brand new inkjet printer is $X, and the package of cartridges is $X -10% or sometimes of even equal price?.

When you run out of ink, sometimes is better to throw the old one to the garbage and buy a brand new one for a few bucks more instead of buying just the cartridges. Ludicrous!

I will share my own experience, Epson R200's are at $80-$100 price range. If you buy original epson cartridges, the whole set of 6 will be $79,78 (Quoted from the Epson website). It's almost the full printer, how can it be possible???

Quoting Mr. Spock:



That's NOT logical!

This is what I did: I bought a brand new Epson R200 at Sam's Club for $80, and I installed a $65 CIS (Continuous Ink System) that came with 6 BIG tanks + 6 BIGGER refill bottles of ink. Total: $145
I sold the original Epson cartridges on Ebay for $60. Total: $85

For $85 I have my printer giving me GREAT quality inexpensive prints. My printer has never tasted "original" epson cartridges and the results are just as good.

What do you think, are they justified to charge that much because of the so called superior quality of their supplies, or are they just profit gluttons?

Discuss.

Originally Posted by 3Simon7

And the consumers love it!!!

Not this consumer

I'm not against a company making a profit, that's what they are for!.

But there's a difference between making a honest profit and stealing from your costumers.

It's true that no one is holding a gun to the customer's heads to force them to buy their products, but they scare the shit out of them with false advertising like "If you use generic cartridges your printer will break and it will be unusable, and of course, it will void the warranty".

Originally Posted by adam

As others have said, the money is in the consumable ink not in the printer. For all we know, they may be selling the printers for a loss. That's what most video game console manufacturers do.

With videogames I can understand it. The amount of work, equipment and qualified people that you need to make a game it's a big investment, they can't just sell the game for peanuts.
Also, it's not like there are companies selling "generic games".

But if there are companies selling ink for pennies, and the difference ($$$) is THAT much....

I call that a profit glutton. No respect for their customers.

I believe they are justified to charge whatever the market will bear. It's called free enterprise. They are justified in claiming that using generic inks can cause damage and will void the warranty, since they have no idea where your generic inks are coming from and I know from my own experience with an old canon printer that generic inks can cause problems if they aren't formulated correctly. Epson is a publicly traded company and I don't see where they're reporting huge profits to their shareholders. They've set the price that they think is correct and you have the choice to buy from them, or buy elsewhere and take your chances. To me, they are making an honest profit, even if it does seem odd that the ink price is comparable to buying a new printer.
My only complaint with Epson is that they're the only game in town for a CD/DVD printer (unmodified). But I don't see that they've really abused their monopoly, I'd just like to see some competition.

Adam, I understand that, but I read the patent once and while I don't remember all the details, I remember thinking at the time that the patent was too broad. But like I said, I don't think they're abusing the monopoly and I agree that their printers do a very good job at a good price.

Originally Posted by moviebuff2

MeDiCo_BrUjO wrote:

This is what I did: I bought a brand new Epson R200 at Sam's Club for $80, and I installed a $65 CIS (Continuous Ink System) that came with 6 BIG tanks + 6 BIGGER refill bottles of ink. Total: $145

Hi MeDiCo_BrUjO

What is this CIS? What do you mean by "BIG tanks"? The cartridges come in only one size. Anything different from that size will not fit in the slot. Please clarify, I'm curious.

Also, each of the cartridge has some device (where the manufacturer says "don't touch"). This device enables the printer to recognize whether or not the cartridge is a genuine or not. Do you have this problem with your CIS?

Actually, I did buy an Epson R-200. But I returned it after it gave me headache with generic ink cartridges.

Hey Moviebuff how are you?

This is the thing, generic cartridges per se are a headache, because you have no way of telling which ones are the good ones and which ones suck... until you buy them!.
CIS (Continuous Ink System) is a system with a special set of cartridges that are externally fed by big ink tanks. When you run out of ink, you have to recharge the external tanks (each external tank holds enough ink to fill 6-8 cartridges of each color).
So by the time you refill a tank, you have actually used 6-8 cartridges of that color.
Now, what's the deal with the chips?. Good CIS's have auto-reset chips, meaning that when the printer software "decides" (because the decision is only based on an estimate) that the cartridge should be empty, the auto-reset chip does it's thing and the counter goes up again to 99%.
Why 99% and not 100%?, because every time the cartridge goes to up 100% (only when you DO change the old one for a new one), the printer performs a head cleaning and that consumes ink. Since you really didn't change the physical cartridge, there is no need to perform a head cleaning process every time a chip resets a color. So it goes back up to 99% and you can print like nothing happened.

BTW, this is a CIS:

Originally Posted by moviebuff2

Thanks MeDiCo_BrUjO

Very interesting. I will look into this since there is a sales on the Epson ($29.99 after rebate).

Have you ever printed a photo with a solid color background? For example, a photo with just a person and the blue sky in the background. I did once or twice and got horizontal lines across the pictures. This happened with both genuine Epson ink cartridges and generic ones. Cleaning the cartridges did not help (and it consumed lots of ink! gr...)

Cheers

p.s.: just checked with InkRepublic.com, their prices are horrendous: $199.95 (without ink), $275.95 (with ink).

I have printed LOTS of pictures with all the combinations of colors and the quality is awesome!.

If you are looking for CIS, then Ebay is the place to look. There's a lot of good deals there, so don't jump and buy in the first place you look, and DEFINITELY not from inkrepublic, those prices are a ripoff. I just used those pictures because they were the first ones I could find .

You should be able to get a good one for $70-$80, so bid on!.

The guy I bought mine from, he has an Ebay store, http://stores.ebay.com/WHOLESALE-INK_W0QQssPageNameZstrkQ3amefsQ3amesstQQtZkm check him out. I bought from him, so I can tell you he has good stuff.

I just checked and he is selling one for an R200 http://cgi.ebay.com/1140ML-CIS-INK-SYSTEM-FOR-EPSON-R200-R220-R300-RX600_W0QQitemZ2900...QQcmdZViewItem

$25 starting bid and $45 buy it now. I think he stung me with $25 shipping or something, I can't remember, but the price is still good and the system is great.

Good luck!

Originally Posted by moviebuff2

Originally Posted by MeDiCo_BrUjO

You should be able to get a good one for $70-$80, so bid on!.

The guy I bought mine from, he has an Ebay store, http://stores.ebay.com/WHOLESALE-INK_W0QQssPageNameZstrkQ3amefsQ3amesstQQtZkm check him out. I bought from him, so I can tell you he has good stuff.

Are you sure it's $70-$80? I just checked, it's half of your price. OMG, look at all of those needles & pumps. Perhaps that's why zzyzzx said: "I love those continuous ink pics."

For me, those little pumps remind me of this story:

http://rds.yahoo.com/S=53720272/K=penis+pump/v=2/SID=e/l=NSR/R=6/;_ylt=A9htfMPXMe9EUCM..._pump_threat_5

$25 starting bid - $45 Buy it now price.

Let's assume you get it for $35.

$35 + $25-$35 shipping = $60-70 (within my price range).

Email the seller and request a shipping quote. I remember paying almost as much for shipping as for the CIS itself.

Originally Posted by SingSing

I beg the seller get his money back on shipping alone.

That's for sure. It's one of those "common practices" between ebay sellers now.

But still, even this way it's cheaper than buying it retail from an online store.