Canon sued for $5 million for disabling scanner when printers run out of ink

[p51d007]

I've been in the photocopier business since the early 80's. One of our vendors recently upgraded the firmware in their copier line. When we set up the machine in the shop, the older firmware worked with NO problem with Katun toner (actually it produces a superior color copy than the OEM toner, and it is a little less expensive). Setup went fine. Machine was one version off so after the upgrade it rebooted and says "toner not recognized". What, in my opinion it SHOULD say is "non xxxxx toner, please use xxxxx toner" and continue to work, but nope! Dead in the water. Downgraded the firmware and it worked fine.
I contacted Katun, had one of their software engineers call me back and we spent an hour on the phone trying to figure a workaround. Nope. They have to reprogram the CRUM chip to make it work. Since they had some of our machines they said about a week ago they know what to change and they are going to send us some to try, then roll it out in November.

I kind of look at it like this. When you purchase a vehicle, are you "required" to use a certain type of oil, gasoline, windshield wipers etc? NOPE. Same should hold true for ink/toner.
Granted, if you use non OEM supplies during the warranty period, and, something goes wrong, technically that should be on you, but, these vendors are using the razor/razor blades marketing.
GIVE you the product, charge an arm & a leg for the supplies.
It just ticks me off they charge say 100 bucks for a black toner cartridge, but 3-4 times that for
cyan, magenta & yellow. Being in this business for over 40 years, I know that the only difference
is the pigment of the toner. The MATERIAL is exactly the same. All of our machines use the same photoconductor drums, so if the toner were different, it wouldn't work.
Just ripping off the customers.

 

[Geralt]

I agree. It makes it even easier, IMO, to keep the printer in top shape, and less parts to concern one's self with replacing.

Personally, I have never had a problem with a fuser. Perhaps because I replace my lasers before fuser problems develop. It sounds like the fusers are not easy to replace, so it is probably cheaper and less labor intensive to just replace the printer. The one thing about replacing relatively often, perhaps every five or ten years, is that the printer you buy as a replacement is probably better anyway due to the rate at which technology is advancing.

I find it interesting that you mention HP. Several posts to this thread have mentioned HP as being a troublesome brand. Personally, I've never owned an HP printer - laser or otherwise. (I have, however, owned a couple of their calculators.) As far as printers go, it sounds like HP is a brand to avoid. I honestly think that people buy HP because of that brand-name recognition. Brand name, though it might be great for some products, does not guarantee that all of the brand's products will be equally as good, IMO.

I had a few years ago an HP inkjet printer. Better than Epson but the cartridges cost an eye!

 

[docbill]

If you aren't using an Epson Ink Tank printer at this point you're doing it wrong.

I gave up on ink jet printers years ago. But many of the laser printers are doing the same thing. Worse, they do things like refuse to print in black and white because you are out of yellow towner. So for my last two lasers, I first googled on the way to reset the toner before buying the printer. So they always think I am full, even when I am out.

 

[ron baer]

Yeah I knew about this for at least as long as 2016 since I had 2 mx922's and office spaced both of them