Epson settles ink cartridge lawsuit

[robert_k1]

http://www.epsonsettlement.com/

 

 

http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?s=fe8f91081fe9b180e7a988de5a26171f&showtopic=10621

[benbangerter]

Wonderful. Another windfall for the lawyers. The FAQ at epsonsettlement.com do not mention the amount being paid to the law firms involved, but I would guess somewhere around $10 million would be typical for this sort of case. As someone once said, it's that 99% of sleazy lawyers that give the rest a bad name!

[roger_smith4]

This has been posted before.

 

If you look at the remedy, it's pretty weak- basically discounts on Epson products, so this is hardly going to bankrupt Epson. $45 at the Epson store. I'm going to use it to try papers I haven't tried before, and if I like them, Epson's going to make that money back very quicky.

 

Manufacturers hold all the cards. They control the price and ink volume of cartridges, and the new chip systems let them expire cartridges, have printers reject them before they are empty, and lock out competition (and if you reverse engineer the chips, expect a lawsuit from Epson). Sadly enough, class action lawsuits are one of the only tools we have to keep manufacturers honest.

[KenPapai]

<i>"Sadly enough, class action lawsuits are one of the only tools we have to keep manufacturers honest."</i>

<p>

Really? Even more than the market? The class action lawyers make most of the money and Epson's overhead goes even higher meaning your Epson products will cost even more. You really win ehh? Blah.

[steven_clark]

Actually doesn't Canon still use an optical system for judging ink left in it's cartridges? In that case there still is a very viable competitor if you feel the need to switch brands because of Epson's practices.

[roger_smith4]

Trust the market?

With only a few manufactuers who all have similar incentives to maximize profit from ink sales, I'd be worried about collusion. The recent Epson lawsuits against the cartridge refill companies is not reassuring.

 

Is ink getting cheaper? (I actually don't know as I just picked up my first inkjet Epson printer this year)

[roger_smith4]

While lawsuits may increase costs to Epson, they also discourage business practices that Epson would use to raise the price to consumers, so it may well be a net positive for all of us.

[daniel_taylor]

My friend got one of the notices for this lawsuit, having recently purchased an Epson printer. She said it was due to ink remaining in the cartridge when the printer demands a new one. I told her it was frivalous. You would want to change cartridges before sucking out the last drop to avoid a) a ruined last print, and b) the print head mechanism trying to operate with no ink, which could be damaging.

 

She went to throw the letter away and I told her she might as well use the rebate in case the cash value would otherwise go to the sleazy lawyers.

 

If the lawyers had taken the time to actually research the issue, they might have learned the real flaw: clogged print heads on the models that use dye based inks.

 

I now know of a third person who has thrown their Epson dye inkjet in the trash because no amount of cleaning or cleaning solution would save the damn thing. And this is with "genuine Epson cartridges". I love my R800 and have never even had to clean the print heads. But that's Epson's pigment ink. Their dye ink will dry harder than concrete if you leave the printer on but not printing for 5 minutes. The formula must be a close relative of super glue.

 

Though I think Epsons across the board produce the best photos with the most paper options, it forces me to recommend HP to people unwilling to drop $400 on a pigment ink printer.

[daniel_taylor]

"Trust the market? With only a few manufactuers who all have similar incentives to maximize profit from ink sales, I'd be worried about collusion. The recent Epson lawsuits against the cartridge refill companies is not reassuring."

 

If you're going to trust the permanence of your prints to a 3rd party refill company, just buy a Lexmark. Or draw the picture with crayons. At least the crayon version won't fade in 3 months like the 3rd party ink. Or the Lexmark.

 

I've pegged Premium Glossy 8x10's at roughly $2 per print off my R800. That's better than any local photo lab, and about even to an order through WHCC. But of course I don't have to wait on the post office with my R800 like I do with WHCC. If there's greedy price collusion going on, it's not doing a very good job if an ink jet can still beat high speed laser photofinishing equipment in the hands of people not even earning a "living wage" at Walmart.

 

A dye ink Epson is probably about the same if you don't include the 1/2 cartridge, 10 cycle cleaning flush required for a clean print if you turn on the printer and then do something time consuming before printing like, say, launching Photoshop.

[w_t1]

What Ben and Ken said. And I'll keep buying my 1280 ink from MIS Associates...

[bobmichaels]

Drifting off topic a bit, I must respond to two comments made in this thread.

 

First is the grouping of all 3rd party inks in one class and calling them substandard. There are some that are junk and there are some that are at least the equivalent of what Epson produces.

 

Second is the comment about all Epson dye ink printers clogging when not used very frequently. This is simply not the case. I've had an Epson dye ink printer (890) running 3rd party dye inks for almost five years. It's been powered up for almost 100% of that time and sometimes not used for more than a month. And I've never had a real problem clog. Ditto pushing 3rd party pigment through a printer made for dye.

 

FWIW: I swear by Epson printers, sometimes use their paper, but have not bought Epson ink in 5 years. I guess I'm a winner in all this.

 

Interesting note re the settlement: If you bought a refurb printer direct from Epson but did not respond with the registration, it is in the warranty system but you will not receive automatic notification about your $45 chit. I know because I've received notification for printers bought retail and registered but not for those refurbs I have purchased direct from Epson (and one has been replaced under warranty)

[Stock-Photos]

I found it interesting how, when printing only black text documents on my Epson 2200, color cartridges would "expire".

 

The injet ink market is huge. Dell gives away (I threw it away) printers just to sell ink.

[discpad]

"I've pegged Premium Glossy 8x10's at roughly $2 per print off my R800. That's better than any local photo lab..."

 

 

And you can go to Wal-Mart and get a REAL 8x10 PHOTO print for $1.99: You can order it from your desktop, and it will be done by the time you drive over there. Or, if you have a lot of prints, PEPhoto charges 99 cents for an 8x10/8x12:

http://www.PEPhoto.com

 

 

The problem with CMYK inkjet printers is that they have a smaller gamut than RGB photo printers. And, to make matters worse, when inkjet printer manufacturers went to 6 colors, they used CcMmYK with c & m being light cyan & magenta, not bright red and bright greenﾰ -- And the use of light cyan & light magenta was an admission that flesh tones stunk (were not of professional quality) with just CMYK on these desktop printers.

 

 

Granted, 6 color "photo" [sic] printers do a reasonable job with flesh tones... But when the colors get bright, they just clip.

 

 

 

Basically, you can spend more for a desktop CMYK inkjet print and get less; or you can upload your photos to an $80,000 RGB photo printer and get a REAL C-print.

 

 

Cheers! Dan

 

 

 

ﾰ The exception being the huge Roland poster printers, which indeed had bright red and bright green inks.

[discpad]

The footnote symbol I used (ALT+0176) is being displayed as a question mark "?" -- Even though the confirmation email sent the correct character.

 

 

Using a character "#" in the 128 character ASCII set, the 3rd paragraph would be:

 

 

The problem with CMYK inkjet printers is that they have a smaller gamut than

RGB photo printers. And, to make matters worse, when inkjet printer

manufacturers went to 6 colors, they used CcMmYK with c & m being light cyan &

magenta, not bright red and bright green# -- And the use of light cyan & light

magenta was an admission that flesh tones stunk (were not of professional

quality) with just CMYK on these desktop printers.

 

 

...And the footnote would be:

 

 

# The exception being the huge Roland poster printers, which indeed had bright

red and bright green inks.

[discpad]

And RGB photo printer profiles are at:

http://www.DryCreekPhoto.com

 

 

Costco subscribes to the "Full Monte" service; while many other labs (such as Adorama) use generic profiles for their particular minilab printer.

 

 

Labs that have bigger (Chromira, LightJet, Lambda/Epsilon) printers generate their profiles as part of their calibration process: Contact the lab for the .ICC/.ICM file for the RA-4 papers they use.

[daniel_taylor]

"First is the grouping of all 3rd party inks in one class and calling them substandard. There are some that are junk and there are some that are at least the equivalent of what Epson produces."

 

Maybe, maybe not. Have they submitted to permanence testing? *Most* of them do not last. I cannot claim that 100% of them do not, I know there are some serious companies that make ink and paper for Epsons, and I know some of the papers are tested (and test very well) for permanence.

 

"Second is the comment about all Epson dye ink printers clogging when not used very frequently. This is simply not the case. I've had an Epson dye ink printer (890) running 3rd party dye inks for almost five years."

 

My comment was limited to Epson dye inks. I don't know what the problem is with their formula, but I've performed dozens of cleanings on Epson dye printers and seen three thrown away. For my life I cannot understand why Epson doesn't use their R800/R1800 ink set across the entire line and stick it to HP and Canon on image quality and permanence, and be rid of these stupid clogging problems forever.

[daniel_taylor]

"And you can go to Wal-Mart and get a REAL 8x10 PHOTO print for $1.99:"

 

If they're down to $1.99 I applaud them. However, I take exception that an ink jet print is not a "real" photo print, especially when R800/R1800 prints will last longer than the Fuji prints from Walmart. I have my choice of papers if I print at home, and I don't have to suffer automated cropping or edge bleeding at home either. If I have a bulk order, I trust WHCC (and have more paper choices, again) more than Walmart (though there's not a lot that can get screwed up with straight printing).

 

"The problem with CMYK inkjet printers is that they have a smaller gamut than RGB photo printers. And, to make matters worse, when inkjet printer manufacturers went to 6 colors, they used CcMmYK with c & m being light cyan & magenta, not bright red and bright green? -- And the use of light cyan & light magenta was an admission that flesh tones stunk (were not of professional quality) with just CMYK on these desktop printers."

 

The R800 ink set uses bright red and blue, not light cyan and magenta. Argue all you want about the gamut, with a scientific test chart you may even be right. But I can see no difference between my R800 output and output from a laser photo printer (Walmart, WHCC). At least none that cannot be attributed to paper differences.

[discpad]

"The R800 ink set uses bright red and blue, not light cyan and magenta. Argue all you want about the gamut, with a scientific test chart you may even be right."

 

 

I shoot NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series (NCTS), and I see it all the time.

 

 

And, although bright blue is indeed one color that the CMYK additive gamut can't reproduce, on a statistical basis bright green is needed much more often.

 

 

But then, if there's no light cyan and light magenta as the 5th & 6th "colors" in the R800 inkset, then skin tones stink: Pick your poison.

 

 

Short of a 9 color inkset -- CcMmYK + bright red, green, & blue -- And the cost associated with "chipped" cartridges, you can't beat the $1.99 cost of an 8x10 Frontier print at WallyMart.

[ted_marcus1]

<i>Their dye ink will dry harder than concrete if you leave the printer on but not printing for 5 minutes. The formula must be a close relative of super glue.</i>

 

<p>I have a 1280, which replaced a 780. With the 780, I noticed that if I didn't use the printer for a week one or more nozzles would consistently clog and require one or more cleaning cycles. But it was never as bad as what you describe. The 1280 also clogs with non-use, but for some reason it's nowhere near as bad despite the very same ink.

 

<p>A good cynic would assume that Epson designed the inks to clog so that you'll waste more of it with cleaning cycles. But I really think the tendency to clog is an unfortunate and unavoidable tradeoff in the characteristics of ink designed to produce beautiful and relatively colorfast prints. I'll live with some clogging because the prints look so good.

 

<p>(And, yes, I submitted my settlement claim for both printers. Epson will have to pay out the money anyway, and if I don't claim my share it will just go into some lawyer's pocket.)

[daniel_taylor]

"I shoot NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series (NCTS), and I see it all the time."

 

Well then feel free to send me a couple prints, identical image printed on a Frontier and R800. I would like to see for myself. If I'm wrong, I certainly don't want to continue praising Epson's printers.

 

"But then, if there's no light cyan and light magenta as the 5th & 6th "colors" in the R800 inkset, then skin tones stink: Pick your poison."

 

Never had a problem with skin tones.