Here's something that will make you look at your home printer differently: printer ink costs more per ounce than champagne, perfume, or even human blood. We're talking about $2,700 per gallon for some brands. To put that in perspective, human blood costs around $1,500 per gallon.
The insane part? It costs printer companies less than $0.25 to manufacture a cartridge they sell for $35-$75. That's a markup of over 15,000%. It's one of the most profitable products on the planet, and it's sitting on your desk right now.
Printer companies literally design their printers to be sold at a loss - sometimes even below manufacturing cost. They call it the "razor and blades" business model. The printer is the razor (cheap), and the ink cartridges are the blades (wildly overpriced). They make back all their money, and then some, by trapping you into buying their proprietary ink forever.
But it gets worse. Modern printers have computer chips embedded in the cartridges that prevent you from using cheaper third-party ink. These chips "authenticate" the cartridge and will literally refuse to print if you try to refill an empty cartridge or use a generic brand. Some printers even reject cartridges that still have ink in them once a certain date has passed.
HP, Canon, and Epson have all been caught using firmware updates to disable third-party cartridges that previously worked fine. They remotely update your printer to reject cheaper alternatives. In 2016, HP pushed an update that bricked thousands of printers using non-HP ink, causing a massive backlash.
There's more corporate trickery: printers are programmed to use ink even when you're not printing. They run "cleaning cycles" that waste ink, and they continue using color ink even when you're only printing in black and white. Some estimates suggest up to 50% of the ink you buy never makes it onto paper.
The actual ink inside those cartridges costs about 5 cents per cartridge to produce. The plastic housing costs more than the liquid inside. But printer manufacturers have successfully convinced consumers that this colored liquid requires premium pricing because of "proprietary formulations" and "precision engineering."
Consumer advocacy groups have called it one of the biggest scams in modern retail. You're essentially paying champagne prices for what amounts to dyed water with a few chemicals. And because most people don't calculate the per-page cost before buying a printer, they get locked into this system without realizing they're being fleeced.
Next time your printer says it's "out of ink" when you know there's still some in there, or rejects a perfectly good third-party cartridge, remember: this isn't a bug, it's a feature designed to extract maximum profit from you.