Printer manufacturers are ripping off consumers by overcharging for printer cartridges, according to a study by the Consumer Association"s Which? magazine.
Which? slams the cost of printer ink. A Colour HP cartridge, for example costs £29 or (put another way) 1.70 per millilitre. That"s seven times more expensive than the cost of vintage champagne, it points out. A 1985 Dom Perignon costs 23p per millilitre. Worse still, many printer cartridges give premature warnings that they are running out of ink.
Epson cartridges contain a chip that stop them working when ink runs low. The company says this is a measure to protect consumers from damaging their printer or product sub-standard prints. But, after bypassing this system a Which? researcher was able to print many more pages at accepted quality before the ink ran dry. In one instance the researcher printed 38 per cent more pages during the tests. The least amount of extra pages he was able to print of on an Epsom printer was 17 per cent.