You got a dirt cheap printer because you're paying with supplies. Printer heads are the normal price.
Give me one good reason why this particular business model - base subsidized by consumables - shouldn't be straight up banned. I can't think of any.
If Gillette wants to sell me a $5 razor handle for $2 because it can only use $1 blades from them, why should that be barred as an offer on their part that I accept?
The only reason that manufacturers can get away with planned obsolescence is because they don't have to pay any disposal fees to recycle/remanufacture their equipment. If they took a hit to their bottom line every time a consumer threw out their product, I'm willing to be they'd design products to be a lot more durable and repairable.
noun
a side effect or consequence of an industrial or commercial activity that affects other parties without this being reflected in the cost of the goods or services involved
(emphasis added)
Also, what's the carbon footprint of driving to Kinkos ten times a year vs a printer?
I don't think I've ever had one of my consumer printers break (and I use third-party ink so I'm not even subsidizing them in the end), so the extremity of this argument is surprising. It would be nice if there were aggregate stats on the fragility/lifetime of consumer printers, and maybe all consumer electronics in general.
Not necessarily. But filters are cheap pieces of plastics, whereas the whole magic is in the cartridges, so the pricing structure seems OK.
> Keurigs and their cartridges?
Definitely. Keurig deserves to be dissolved for DRMing coffee and for being an ecological disaster.
> I don't think I've ever had one of my consumer printers break (and I use third-party ink so I'm not even subsidizing them in the end), so the extremity of this argument is surprising.
I had consumer inkjets break on me as often as they run out of ink. And for everyone I know, even in my family, the result was always the same: if basic maintenance like cleaning and re-cleaning heads and banging a bit with a fist didn't work, the printer went to trash and a new one was bought.
To be clear, I'm not against consumables in general. I'm against selling a product way below costs, hoping to recoup the subsidy through inflated pricing of consumables. I feel it's an unfair practice and that it promotes wastefulness and negative ecological externalities.
Another example: Sony sold the PS3 at a loss and recouped the cost through games [1].
If you're concerned about the ecological cost, I think it's better to ban items based on ecological cost (when considering durability and whether it's consumed once or repeatedly) directly. There's no sense in banning certain good printers if they're actually durable. Even your concern with Keurig is not really caused by their base item, but the consumable, right? I think that's the current trend we're following with plastic bags and straws anyway.