The dogs that didn’t bark (2)

THE continuing tale of one consumer’s mistaken belief that consumer protection laws and watchdogs are working on our behalf.

After years of buying expensive inkjet cartridges, I’d had enough. Time for action.

The true cost

That self-depleting printer had done its last page. Red ink turned to red mist and it was switched off. First on the to-do list was tidying up the empties and putting them all in the recycling bag. But it was full.

Crikey, how many had we used? The answer was seven complete sets; one black cartridge; the set left in the printer; plus whatever had been thrown out.

Ink costs turned out to have been over £900. But only a bit at a time. If I hadn’t kept the empties for recycling, I’d never have noticed.

It wasn’t a good start as £900 wasn’t just expensive, it was more like scandalous. Almost time to put the long grey floppy ears on.

The stink about ink

An internet search for “HP printer scandal” immediately showed the scale of the problem - over 300,000 search results. It was clear that this had been going for years – and applied to laser printers as well.

Manufacturers have been dropping the initial purchase prices, so it’s only later that you discover how costly that “inexpensive printer” was – when you’re locked in and paying dearly for ink.

And while HP had the most search results, they weren’t alone. The search revealed that the amount of ink in cartridges has been reducing, and that new printers now only come with starter cartridges.

Electronic “best by” dates have been brought in, along with an incredibly accurate number of pages that each cartridge will print. Funnily enough, if the cartridge says 1,000 pages, it prints exactly 1,000 pages, then stops. Printing in the real world isn’t that exact. Ink usage varies from page to page.

Lastly, I’d missed the stealth “upgrade” in September 2016 which I didn’t need and hadn’t asked for. Allegedly, this now prevented non-HP cartridges from working. Perhaps the after-market cartridge wasn’t faulty after all.

How much???

Putting this in perspective, imagine you’ve bought a car from Austin.

You then discover that it only works with Austin petrol, oil, coolant and windscreen washer fluid. These come in one litre bottles, priced £20 to £40 each. And when one of them runs low, the car stops. It won’t work until you’ve plugged in a new bottle – only from Austin.

If the windscreen washer fluid goes past its best by date while you’re overtaking another vehicle on a country road, hard luck.

Sounds completely bonkers doesn’t it? (Eeyore-like braying noises from offstage)

Letting sleeping dogs lie

In the UK there’s been just four bits of government activity in the past 15 years.

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) published a report in December 2002 titled “Consumer IT goods and services” which expresses concerns about the inkjet market and makes recommendations.

The report was archived in 2008. In its “Progress in Protecting Consumers’ Interests” report in 2003, the National Audit Office refers to “the highest rates of dissatisfaction related to the levels of competition within the market for inkjet cartridges”.

But that’s all.

In 2004, in their “Recent trends in digital imaging” report, the British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (BECTA) wrings its hands over manufacturers “offering basic inkjets at extremely low prices, relying on the revenues from consumables for their profit”.

BECTA went into liquidation in April 2011 a month after its government funding was cut off.

The OFT closed on 1st April 2014 and in its place is the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), however I can’t find anything they’ve done about the great ink stink. It seems I’m not alone though.

In February 2016 Hansard reports a Conservative peer asking about this topic. He was informed that the OFT “carried out a market study in 2001” (actually 2002) then “worked with the industry” to introduce the labelling scheme saying how many pages each cartridge will print.

The Last Word

That’s it. Four mentions. 15 years. So if you reckon the OFT’s gone sOFT, the CMA’s in a CoMA and the lords aren’t a-leaping, I couldn’t possibly comment.

But that’s just the UK. We’ve been ‘in Europe’ since 1973, enjoying European Legislation; EU Directives; the European Competition Commission; plus the European Court of Justice.

Tune in next week to find what they’ve done on our behalf.