The dogs that didn’t bark (3)

What’s the alternative?

IF YOU’D believed that consumer protection laws and watchdogs were working effectively on your behalf, you’d be in the same boat as was a couple of weeks ago.

We’ve seen that the UK authorities haven’t quite had their finger on the pulse of the inkjet printer “smart cartridges” matter, although they were aware of this repeated and expensive cause of consumer dissatisfaction.

Time to take a look at what the European authorities have been doing on our behalf.

In Continent, they challenged

Back in 2002, critics were saying that “smart cartridges” would damage the environment and keep replacement ink costs high. At the time, the EU was discussing waste collection, recycling and recovery targets. Chris Davies, a UK Lib Dem MEP, introduced an amendment for the EU’s Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment (WEEE) directive to include “smart cartridges”.

By December 2002, there were reports in the tech press that they’d come within this directive but despite searching hard, there’s no visible evidence to show that the EU’s ever enforced it.

Around 2005, Dutch based trade association EFIM launched a challenge against “smart cartridges” to help consumers get a better deal.

However the EU’s ruling on May 20, 2009 made it clear that the commission had decided to dismiss the complaint.

In 2010, EU law on vertical agreements changed to help make the ink market more competitive.

A Euro-law-blog reviewed the EFIM case in September 2013, concluding that the Commission’s case was now backed by the European Court of Justice. However, it commented that firms who were locking-in customers or locking-out competitors – “can still expect the vigour of the Commission”.

Despite all this, the EU’s smart cartridge remanufacturing study in 2015 showed that little had changed.

As recently as April 2017, the EU competition commission approved the “Honey I shrunk the market” deal for HP to buy Samsung’s printer business.

Over a period of 15 years, the vigour from The Commission is comparable to the justice from the ECJ as inkjet cartridges appear to be taking the WEEE lightly.

I recall a while back that printers were introduced where one could refill them cheaply and easily. An internet search turned up a number suppliers and their products.

There were some surprises though. They’d been around for three years. One manufacturer had some good products, but the nearest shops for them were in Dubai and India.

Fortunately there were two suppliers’ products on sale in the UK. One was better at printing photos, the other printed whole documents more quickly.

Being more interested in scanning and printing documents, Epson’s Ecotank was the clear choice, however it was more expensive to buy (£280), but came with lots of ink.

The true cost of “HP’s sauce”

Not having looked closely enough at ink costs before, this time I wasn’t about to repeat the mistake. Studiously ignoring page counts while totting up the number of ink cartridges I’d used, the internet quickly led us to the quantity of ink in each cartridge along with today’s prices.

But there was another “surprise” – HP’s ink was more expensive than Bollinger’s champagne. Vintage Bollinger at that. Ho-hum.

The calculation showed that even if the new printer used twice as much ink as the HP had done, its cost saving would be £794 over four years. Despite the printer being more expensive to buy.

This was so much it started me wondering. If just 5% of the UK population had a similar experience, the cost saving would be £650 million at today’s prices. And that’s in just one year.

Since 2002, using that same 5% figure, European consumers have overpaid for their ink by €120 billion. All of a sudden this wasn’t amusing any more.

The Last Word

It’s so far past scandalous it’s a tragedy.

It not only begs questions as to how and why the EU’s been failing its people for so long, it poses more fundamental ones too.

One as to the regulation of companies where the good of the bottom line is more important than the good of the people.

Another as to who’s actually running the show. Governments or a handful of global companies?