A recording of FS Stoppers testing inkjet printing cartridges went viral on TikTok. Reposted by the account Just Random (@randompostandclips), a Canon printer customer cracked open a cartridge.
In the video, which garnered over 2 million TikTok views, the man was shocked at what he discovered.
“Printer Ink, it’s a SCAM,” a text overlay at the top of the clip reads as the tester pops open a Canon ink cartridge. “No way,” he can be heard saying off camera, presumably out of shock at the discovery he just made.
The clip then transitions to the TikToker maligning the printer ink industry. “The one thing that has never changed is the absolute rip-off that are printer ink cartridges. In this video, I’m going to open up one of these and show you what’s actually inside. It is ridiculous.”
Briefly, the video then cuts to his taking a portion of the cartridge’s interior out. It then immediately transitions back to him talking directly to the camera.
How much ink are they packing?
The goal of the experiment was simple: What is he actually paying for? What’s the amount of ink inside of these cartridges? “I wonder how much ink is actually inside one of my Canon printer cartridges. To my surprise, the box actually tells you 11.9 milliliters.”
Since this is America, we rarely use the metric system, which prompted him to explain this measurement. “How much is 11.9 milliliters, you might be wondering? Well, this is exactly 12 milliliters of water.”
He held up a glass decanter to the camera with a smidgen of water sloshing around its bottom. “Look at how little this is. But even still, when I hold this, it feels hollow. And when I shake it, I hear nothing. It’s like there’s no liquid in this at all.”
The TikToker says this as he holds up a Canon Printer Ink cartridge and begins shaking it in front of the camera.
The test
“I wanna see if this actually has 11.9 milliliters. First, I drilled a hole in one of these brand-new cartridges. And the first thing I realized was that the drill bit was hardly dirty.”
He took the fact that there wasn’t much ink staining on his drill bit as a bad sign. Things only got worse from there. The tester recorded himself attempting to pour the ink out of the cartridge into the same glass decanter. But, no dice.
“And when I tipped it over to dump it out, no ink came out at all. I then went outside so that my wife wouldn’t kill me.” Next, he recorded the ink cartridge placed on its side outdoors on pavement. He then grabbed a flathead screwdriver and pried open the cartridge. “And I opened up the printer cartridge. I could not believe what was inside.”
What’s inside?
On the interior of the cartridge housing, it looks like there’s a small white sponge wedged inside. “I thought there was gonna be a little reservoir with some ink in it. Instead, there were two small pieces of foam that were lightly dusted with printer ink. I’m telling you, there was such little ink on this thing that it didn’t even soak all the way through. Look at the white areas here.”
At this point in the clip, he shows himself prying and poking at the white foam bits inside of the cartridge. He extracted one of the bits to demonstrate that the ink cartridges are, indeed, not filled with liquid ink. Rather, they have some bits of foam that include a bit of printer ink dusted onto them.
“No way. It’s hardly even wet in there. There’s nothing in here!” he shouted. “Oh my gosh! It’s barely moist with ink. Barely wet inside,” he says, dipping his finger into the now-empty cartridge housing.
@randompostandclips Printer Ink, It’s a SCAM – Credit – Fstoppers YoutTube #printers #tech #science #business #clips #facts ♬ original sound – Just Random
Scammed?
According to his testing, he speculated that Canon was lying about the amount of ink in its cartridges. “And when I squeeze this as hard as I could with pliers. I could get, like, a single drop to come out of this. 11.9 milliliters of ink is almost no ink at all.”
To demonstrate his claim, he filled up the cartridge with some water. He then concluded his video by stating casual printers won’t likely care. “If you’re only printing out a few pages a month, it probably doesn’t matter. But if you’re printing out a few pages a day, you are getting so ripped off. It’s ridiculous.” He went into greater detail on the FS Stoppers blog as to why he believes folks are overpaying for cartridges.
There have been several others online who’ve claimed that printer ink companies are “scamming” their customers, such as IT World Canada, which wrote that printers are designed to “lie” to their customers about ink levels. The outlet’s assessment of Canon, HP, and Kodak brand printers determined the printers miscalculated ink amounts. In the instances referenced, cartridges still had 40 percent more ink left in them than indicated. However, the printer software still urged users to swap out their cartridges.
More consumer complaints
And then there were folks on this Quora forum who complained about printer ink levels drying out prematurely. One redditor who showed off a screenshot of cartridge levels after a single print page. The screenshot indicated more ink use than one would expect for a single page.
According to one user in the comments section, this is due to inkjet printer patents. They claim laser jet printing doesn’t have this same monopolistic system in place, which is why laser printer toners last longer, are more reliable, and are overall better purchases. “4 companies (hp, canon, epson and brother) own all the essential patents required to make a inkjet printer so other companies cannot [compete]. Luckily that didn’t happen with laser printers so there is still competition,” they wrote.
According to Google patents, HP does indeed own the patent on this specific thermal inkjet printing protocol. As per Justia, Ricoh owns a patent for this gas-powered inkjet printing methodology.
According to these CDW and Reddit posts, laser jet printing is more “economical” than inkjet printing. The data on both sites shows that the cost per page of laser printing is significantly lower than ink.
TikTokers weren’t surprised
One commenter said they intentionally purchase “ink tank” printers. According to Epson, this model comes with a “ridiculous amount of ink.”
Someone else echoed this sentiment, writing, “I’ve the the ink tank printer way better barely use ink with it.”
Another person shared their own grievances with inkjet printers. “It pisses me off so much when it says it’s low on something like cyan and can’t print black because of it.”
While others, like this TikToker, agreed with the Canon tester. “The printing industry is a total scam.”
Others thought it was high time for a class-action lawsuit to be levied against printing companies. “Some laws need to be made to address this.”
Meanwhile, someone else said that they feel bad for households that can’t afford to print despite owning a printer. “I feel bad for the poor families that could barely afford a printer then it quickly becomes useless because the ink is so expensive.”
The Daily Dot has reached out to Canon and FS Stoppers via email for further information. The Daily Dot has also reached out to @randompostandclips via TikTok comment for further information.
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