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Actually, I don’t think this is a fitting meme.
This isn’t a rent-seeking, wallet rape bullshit “subscription” (like BMW heated seats), it’s a legitimate subscription service where they just order and ship a product automatically for you on a regular schedule (like Amazon) and give you a discount. Also, you’re not forced to purchase a subscription, you can just buy retail cartridges if you prefer.
This actually makes a lot of sense for people who print regularly and frequently.
Edit: it has been pointed out to me that there is, in fact, some tomfuckery involved with this subscription model
Ok I’ll take that.
(Still funny though.)
Oh, so like Dollar Shave Club but for printer ink? Really, it’s a little surprising that hasn’t happened before 2023. Or maybe it has?
Yes, exactly like that
Call it the Dollar Per Page Club
Brother also makes sewing machines and haven’t attempted to put DRM on thread. Yet.
HP has that business model for quite a while already
Before I bought a brother printer, I would just buy and/or refill whatever cartridges I could get for my printers because of HP’s and Canon’s bullshit. Now that I own a Brother, I only buy toner and cartridges directly from them. Vote with your wallets, people.
Yep, Brother is the GOAT. I bought a basic Brother laser printer 10 years ago for a hundred bucks and I’ve replaced the toner, like, twice. Never given me a single problem.
I suppose people are afraid this is the first step towards the awful subscriptions all the other companies milk dry. If brother wanted to be different, you would expect them to be marketing about it right and left.
And if you want to pay more as it is based on pages and not ink usage. Also, apparently the cartridge gets disabled as soon as you cancel.
Oh, that, I was not aware of. Okay, that is a kinda bullshitty.
Could you elaborate on the tomfuckery? I’m not seeing it here.
Someone else in this reply chain mentioned that the ink will be disabled if you cancel the subscription.
I thought that was an HP thing.
and it made them money, so now everyone’s doing it.
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I’ve never needed to change a printer chip, so this doesn’t look useful to me. Did I misunderstand something?
Big brands like Epson and Canon have verification chips on their proprietary ink containers and also ‘read ink levels’ that simply stop your printer from functioning even if it has ink if their cartridges drip below a certain level, sometimes as high as 50%. It’s a scammy practice to fraudulently sell you more ink even if you haven’t run out but the ink is now considered out of date or some bullshit.
I assume this is a way to circumvent your printers crap and make it print until the ink runs out. The websites not particularly clear on that.
Ah, that. Nice to know there’s a way around it.
I get an eye opening “Error establishing a database connection”.
My life will never be the same! 😭
Oh shit, thanks for this.
[Everyone hated that]
But seriously, we should just start a “non shitty printer company” that just makes… non shitty printers
A few have tried…
Kodak did this a few years but the big printer companies slashed prices in the printers to next to nothing. Kodaks $200 printer with cheap ink, huge cartridges, and no chips didn’t sell well when Canon would have a similar printer (scan, print, etc) for $49 next to it. Consumers are dumb.
Brother’s eco tank is close… but if they are killing that off in the name of ink selling greed as this meme suggests…
Hmmm, well actually it looks like it’s been a thing for a while: https://www.therecycler.com/posts/brother-launches-ez-print-subscription-service/
But then we can’t make all the money. Won’t some one think of the shareholders for once
Damn I forgot about that. Shareholders > Customers
The thing with printers is that they are very hard to get right. Its not like some startup can just make a printer that printer with the same speed and quality as some of the big brands.
With that being said I still would back any startup that tries
That’s it. That’s the end of printers as I know it. Thankfully the last time I needed to print anything was over a year ago.
Brother! You were our last hope! Why!?
i recommend the Epson Eco-Tank line of models. they refill using bottles which are not cheap either, but they have no way of disabling your printer arbitrarily.
It might just be cheaper to raise squid and make your own ink cartridges.
Omg
