Partners that sell HP Inc printers have said that remanufactured cartridges are causing damage to the printers.
CRN reported on responses from some of the OEM’s partners after the OEM released a fix for consumers who were affected by the firmware update (LINK). Bob Venero, CEO of Future Tech, said “it’s simple, crap in, crap out”, adding that “this is not a freedom of choice issue. It is a quality issue. We see remanufactured cartridges where toner is leaking out of the device. The risk is not worth the reward.
“If I was HP I would stand my ground and do what is right for the business and not allow remanufactured cartridges to be used in HP printers”. The report also saw partners suggest that “cloned, counterfeit and remanufactured cartridges are jeopardising security” as well as substandard printing quality and more cost to the consumer in the long term. Jon Flaxman, COO of HP Inc, had apologised to affected customers in a blog, but said that HP Inc were committed to using “security features in the future”.
Venero said that his company will not deal with customers who want to use remanufactured cartridges because “my services’ costs go up exponentially on devices that use remanufactured toner. The clone cartridges end up breaking HP printers with customers blaming HP as the printer manufacturer – not the third-party clone cartridge maker”.
Venero continued by saying “HP has invested billions and billions of dollars in R&D in creating the number-one printer offering in the market, giving a third-party non-certified toner cartridge maker the ability to impact the user experience doesn’t make sense”. Another partner, Bruno Tirone, President and CEO of MRA, said “buying cloned cartridges ultimately ends up costing the customer in the form of a broken printer that needs to be replaced”.
He added that “it’s a big mistake to use non-HP cartridges. Even though they end up saving a couple of pennies on the cartridge in six months to a year, they end up having to replace the printer. At the end of the day, the customer has saved a couple of pennies but their (print) yield is a lot less and they have destroyed their printer”.
Tirone blames the purchasing departments for buying non HP cartridges: “The purchasing department by trying to save money actually ends up costing the company more. What happens is you end up with leakage inside the printer. That means the printer needs to be serviced more. Eventually you wind up killing the printer. We fix printers. I see it on a daily basis with remanufactured cartridges. It’s crazy. But it’s a good market for me because I end up making money selling new printers.”
Tirone said that HP Inc was being “unfairly singled out because it is the market leader”, and that “when you are the champion, everyone picks on you. HP is the gorilla in the market”. CTO of Generation Computing, Dan Molina, compared buying a Mercedes car and then using non-Mercedes parts to buying non-HP cartridges, and that ultimately this would cost the customer more.
“The whole point of selling a managed service is to free the customers of the concern of managing day to day operations with printers so they can use that time on something that is more beneficial to their business”, he said.