Amazon has the Brother HL-2070N laser printer on sale for $89. There is no rebate, no tax and no shipping, so that is your final price at checkout.

The HL-2070N is a workgroup printer, so it’s suited for those who need to share. It has a 2400 x 600 dpi resolution with and Brother rates it at 20 ppm. It has a 250-sheet capacity and can produce its first page in under 10 seconds. It has been on the market for about a year and a half, so the sudden price drop (it originally listed at $300) might mean that they are phasing it out. If so, this is a deal to hop on because this has been a popular and well-reviewed printer - right now it almost has a perfect feedback rating on Amazon. Plus, since it’s a Brother laser printer, the toner costs will be lower than most other competing models.

If you need Brother HL-2070N toner cartridges, you can head over to our site. If you want to leave feedback on this model, you can post a comment.

We’ve written before about how mail-in rebates were a pretty big scam and that some companies were phasing them out completely or else switching them to online rebates. But still, most of the discounts on inkjet printers these days involve some type of rebate, so they are pretty hard to avoid.

So everyone knows how stores intentionally make it difficult to claim a rebate by requiring a receipt, the rebate form and the UPC from the box all before a certain date. Then if you somehow realize eight weeks later that it never came, it can be almost impossible to seek any recourse. When one of the roadblocks that the store or rebate companies puts up works and someone fails to claim their rebate, that is called “breakage”.

One company that loves breakage is Parago, the company that does rebates for Circuit City. They have just been granted a patent where they basically admit that they do everything possible to promote breakage. Here is an excerpt from the patent:

Furthermore, the rebate processing system provides a user friendly interface, yet retains hurdles sufficient to maintain breakage.

They also specifically mention the ways that people fail to get their rebates, like

…bad verification materials such as receipts or UPC symbols, denying based on improper purchase dates or purchase price, or slippage from checks issued but not cashed.

Here is the patent for anyone crazy enough to read the whole thing.

Rebates to become more of a scam [ZDNet]

Most inkjet printers have a monthly volume of anywhere from 1000-3000 sheets, meaning that is the pretty much the maximum amount of prints you can do in a month without breaking your machine. But beyond that, there are really no estimates as to how long modern inkjet printers will last.

Prior to the home printing explosion of the last few years, the limited amount of inkjet models on the market were all pretty durable. Tons of people had old HP Deskjets that were still in operation after six or seven years of regular operation. Then came the era of the sub-$100 printer and everything changed. People began chucking printers after a year because they got clogged, had paper jams or just plain stunk. The idea of fixing minor problems with your printer fixed in order to extend its life also vanished. Prices went down and technology got better, but reliability went out the window.

So when you buy a new printer today, how long should you expect it to last? Two years? Maybe three? While we can’t give you an exact answer, here’s a short rundown of what you can expect

• Lexmark/Dell - you probably will not make it past two years (even if you do, most people will have given up by then). Dell printers have only been on market for three years or so, and we’d be surprised if a lot of people still had any of their first-run models.
• Epson - hit or miss. You could have it for a few months and it gets clogged or you could have it for years. Depends on which model you get.
• HP - also hit or miss. They used to be reliable workhorses, but now the market is flooded with low end Deskjets. Don’t expect more than two years out of a cheap model.
• Canon - probably the best bet for keeping your printer beyond two years. You will likely pay a little bit more upfront for one of their models, but it will be worth it in the long run. We very rarely hear of people discarding their Canon inkjets out of frustration, something we can’t really say about any other brand.

The lack of real specific numbers is due to the fact that these “next generation” printers have only been on the market for two or three years. The technology of inkjet printers keeps getting more and more complicated, so it’s hard to compare to any printers older than a few years.

We have received an unusually high number of complaints about the Epson Stylus CX6000 on a post we did a while back. People started posting how their ink cartridges were running out very quickly (a matter of days) and then others started posting how they complained to Epson about the problem. Based on what a few commenters said, there seems to be a problem with the chips on the cartridges. There are errors on the chips that cause the printer to think that the cartridge is empty when in fact, it’s got plenty of ink left. A few people said that they were told by Epson that the ink levels would be fixed when they reached the 20% level. A few people got Epson to send them some new cartridges and one even got a new Epson printer out of it.

Here is what one of the commenters, Floyd, had to say:

I just received a call from Epson’s Customer Service Department. They told me that the problem isn’t with the printer itself. They say that it’s a programmimg error on the chips wihin the ink cartridges themselves. The error causes the printer’s indicators to report ink levels erroneously. It was stated that once the actual ink level reaches 20%, the problem would correct itself. He’s sending out a black cartridge to replace the one in the printer. I will continue to monitor this to see if what they told me is true.They state the error has been corrected and this will not happen in future cartridges.

At first, the problem with the CX6000 (and CX5000) was that the ink cartridges weren’t available anywhere. Now that they are available, they aren’t working.

Office Depot has the Deskjet 5440 on sale for $30. This is a regular sale - no mail-in rebates. If you order it online, you will have to pay shipping because you have to spend more than $50 to get free shipping. So maybe you can buy this printer and like some pencils or something.

The Deskjet 5440 is called a photo printer, but that is really in name only. It is a standard inkjet model that is capable of printing photos. It doesn’t speciliaze in photos, but that should be pretty obvious from the $30 price tag. HP rates it at 22 ppm for black and 21 for color, so it’s a pretty fast printer. It’s got a resolution of 4800 x 1200 and it can supposedly print a 4 x 6 pictures in 27 seconds. They must be talking about a 4 x 6 of three dots.

If you need HP Deskjet 5440 ink cartridges, you can go to our site, or if you own this printer already you can leave a comment.

Although this may not apply to most of the standard inkjet printers that people buy, there is a story in the Washington Post today about what a big scam extended warranties/service plans are.

The decision to buy an extended warranty, however, defies the recommendations of economists, consumer advocates and product quality experts, who all warn that the plans rarely benefit consumers and are nearly always a waste of money.

Stores like Best Buy and Circuit City are pretty famous for offering warranties, but other stores like Staples offer them as well. If you are buying a $40 inkjet printer and you get some lazy kid at the counter, then maybe he won’t offer you one, but if you buy an expensive photo or laser printer, you will probably have to hear about some three year service plan, that “like, totally covers everything sir.”

The basic idea is that the warranties go unused because either the item never breaks, or when it does break the warranty doesn’t cover it because it was accidental damage or maybe just because the underwriter for the warranty doesn’t want to pay. But, as consumers we have this instinct to avoid a short-term risk even if it means giving up the long-term benefits.

One time I got into an argument with a clerk at Circuit City because I didn’t want to pay $80 for a warranty. I told him before he even rang me up that I didn’t want the warranty, but he still asked me about it. Then he asked me about it two more times when I turned it down. Eventually he asked why and I told him that I don’t just assume everything I buy is going to break in one year. Then after I became frustrated with his persistence, I asked him “are you saying you are selling me something that is absolutely guaranteed to break within a year?” He had to say no to that, and then tell me that the real reason to get it was so that you could trash what you buy for a year, come back, and then get a brand new one. Pretty good official Circuit City policy.

Neither Circuit City nor Best Buy discloses how much of its bottom line comes from extended warranty sales. But analysts have estimated that at least 50 percent and in some lean years 100 percent of profits at the electronics retailers come from extended warranty sales.

Sounds about right.

Unwarranted [Washington Post]

Today we had a complaint from one of our customers regarding the Dell 720 printer. We sent out a monthly newsletter that listed our most popular cartridge (the HP 56) and our most popular printer (the Dell 720). The HP 56 popularity is based on sales and the Dell 720 popularity is based on how many people viewed that page. So the issue was that the customer took that as sort of an endorsement from us because we listed the printer as popular, but didn’t make any mentions of its shortcomings.

My response was we were just listing the data, not saying the Dell 720 was good. I then cited some past examples of how we have always advised against buying Dell/Lexmark printers due to their high ink costs and quality issues. But at the same time, it was a fair complaint since we like to try to help our customers get the right printer. We see ourselves as not just an ink supplier, but also as a resource for printer-related questions/concerns.

Going back to the main issue…the Dell 720 probably does stink. Dell inkjets are automatically a pain due to the ink costs, but most of them are entry-level models not known for their longevity. Now, we’ve heard lots of feedback about how no one really likes their Dell printers, but is there anyone out there who disagrees? We’re curious as to whether or not there are people out there who are actually like Dells.

So, if anyone has any feedback (on the Dell 720 or otherwise), let us know.

Eh.

We don’t like the sound of that, but that’s how a lot of people find our site. Our site doesn’t really say cheap ink cartridges anymore, but people still end up here somehow. While it’s technically true that we have cheap ink, since our prices are low, we don’t have cheap ink - as in ink that isn’t high quality.

When we first started in this business, cheap ink was all that anyone ever searched for online. No one really knew anything about remanufactured cartridges or compatible cartridges, they just knew they wanted something that was cheaper than the OEM cartridges they found in Staples. So in the early days, tons of sites appeared hawking ink that was cheap in the truest sense - inexpensive and crappy.

Most of those sites disappeared and people looking to buy their ink online learned how to search better. Now they search for HP 56 ink or they enter their specific printer model. Frankly we are pretty good that most consumers have refined their searching methods and learned more about what products are available.

What search did you do to find Pacific Ink?

Buy.com has the PIXMA MP460 on sale for $87. Unlike most of their other sales, there is no rebate involved and there is free shipping, so that’s your final price (for most states). The retail price on this printer is $130, although it was never really that expensive.

The PIXMA MP460 is a multifunction printer that is rated at 22 pages per minute for black and 17 for color. It has a resolution of up to 4800 x 1200 and Canon says that it can print a 4 x 6 picture in 52 seconds. Since we posted a review for this printer, a lot of people have come here to read about it, so it seems like this is becoming a very popular printer.

If you already own this printer, you can leave some feedback on it for others. If you require Canon PIXMA MP460 ink cartridges, then you can head over to our site.

This happens quite often, although it used to be a more common problem. Your printer just keeps spitting out endless sheets of paper, usually with some sort of gibberish code on them. Pushing buttons on the printer won’t do anything, and there’s usually nothing that can be done on your computer.

The first step is to unplug the printer and leave it unplugged for about a minute. See if this clears the printer’s memory and stops the printing. If the endless printing job stays in the memory, then you will have to unplug the printer and shut down your computer. The problem is with the print spooler, which stores information about your jobs and sends them to the printer. If the job is stuck in there, you should be able to cancel and delete it after you have unplugged the printer and restarted. Try these steps before you do anything drastic like reinstalling the drivers. For some new inkjets, this can be a pretty big pain since the drivers are so large.