Epson America – More Annoying Than Ever

I just got an email notification from one of my favorite online ink cartridge retailers that they will be discontinuing most, if not all of their Epson compatible inkjet cartridges.

It appears Seiko Epson has been busy suing approx 24 makers of compatible cartridges pretty much saying that unless these companies are willing to pay for a license to use Epson technology – which would of course increase the cost and thus the price of compatible cartridges making them no better deal than the originals – then Epson is going to find a way to force them out of business to try to boost their own bottom line which has gone into the red recently.

Epson’s complained that they don’t make any money on actually selling printers and need to make all their money on the after-market cartridges and refilling used ones.  Note: I find that funny as none of my cartridges for either my CX88 or CX5800F are refillable and Epson has made them such that if you accidentally pull out one and try to use it again, it’s ruined and won’t work anymore, no matter how much ink is left in it.  Not to mention, Epson just got class-action sued for making their own cartridges trigger the “empty” signal long before they really are… (Detect a pattern there?)

It seems to me that the money they’ve spent suing these people (no doubt contributing to the loss they posted) would have been better spent on developing lower cost cartridges in order to compete better and make customers happy rather than pulling the rug out from people already using their printers.

Epson’s printer sales have dropped due to miscalculating the number of people wanting stand-alone printers versus multifunction units and they say they’ll have to sell current inventory at a loss in order to “realign” their inventory to the market. So, it seems, we consumers have to “fix” their business model by paying even more for supplies from only one source – them. Yeeesh.

The only reason I bought Epson this last time was they have separate cartridges for Magenta, Cyan, Yellow, (and Black) so I didn’t have to throw away 2 colors when the 3rd ran out (as you do in brands that have all 3 “colors” in 1).  Another reason I went with Epson was there were alternatives to their exorbitantly priced “brand” name cartridges. However, now that that’s changing and places like Office Max and Walgreen’s refill cartridges from brands like HP with quality ink, I definitely will probably switch printer brands as refillable cartridges are more ecologically-sound anyway besides less expensive than what Epson will be offering. (With NO competition, their ultimate goal, I can just imagine what price heights their own cartridges would reach.)

So I guess Epson won’t have to worry about losing money on selling me my next printer as I won’t be buying another given their latest business practices.

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