Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by csomar 3748 days ago
Hi. I didn't complain mainly about the quality of the printer. It's cheap and it's expected to just work. But not working because a cartridge is available or "malicious" pricing of printer/cartridge is not honest business.

At least, that's how I see it.

1 comments

You can see it however you want, but that's how businesses work now, and they've been doing it for a century now. It's called the "razor and blades" business model, which started with Gillette. You get the main item cheap, and then the consumables are horrendously overpriced. Who cares if it's honest or not? People are so gullible they'll buy into it, and if they haven't figured it out after 100 years, they're never going to, so companies might as well use this model or else they'll be uncompetitive.

If you don't like getting ripped off this way, it's really easy to avoid: buy a business-class printer, and not some cheap-o consumer printer.