Melissa Riofrio, in an article in PCWorld wrote:
“A lot of people may not care whether Lexmark inkjets live or die. For most of the years that Lexmark was making inkjets, its products were notoriously bad.
Lexmark inkjets were expensive, cheaply made, and subpar in performance, and the company was almost shameless about the high prices it charged for replacement inks. Even if you received the printer for free when you bought a new PC, as many users did, you regretted its shortcomings sooner rather than later.”
Ms. Riofrio goes on to list positive changes Lexmark has made to its product line in recent years but for most of us, particularly in my industry, the bad old days are all we’ll remember and I admit that I’m glad Lexmark is exiting the consumer inkjet market.
I can’t think of a company more openly disrespectful of its customers and hostile to competition than Lexmark. In 2005 it was handed a victory in the Arizona Cartridge Remanufacturers vs. Lexmark International case giving it the right to sue customers who failed to return their empty “prebate” cartridges.
Lexmark’s “prebate” program offered cartridges at a reduced price if the purchaser agreed to return the spent cartridge to Lexmark. The agreement was printed on the box and when customers opened the box they were considered, by Lexmark, to have accepted the terms of the agreement.
The court agreed, giving consent for Lexmark to sue its own customers over an agreement that had no other purpose than to keep Lexmark cartridges from being remanufactured and sold to customers at a much lower price than Lexmark originals.
In another 2005 case, Lexmark International v. Static Control, Lexmark was defeated when the Supreme Court refused to hear its petition that would have prevented third party chips produced by Static Control, a North Carolina company that produces remanufacturering components, from working in its printers.
A Lexmark victory would have prevented its customers from using lower cost remanufactured cartridges in their printers. But losing this time around did nothing to lessen Lexmark’s anti competitive fervor.
In recent years the company distributed a firmware “upgrade” that prevented unsuspecting customers from using remanufactured or refilled cartridges in their printers; it also introduced kill switches in many Lexmark inkjet cartridges that prevented them from being refilled. The purpose once again was to prevent its customers from having the option of using lower cost remanufactured cartridges in Lexmark printers.
Now, after years of sinking revenues and fruitless attempts to assert its will on customers and competitors Lexmark is throwing in the towel on the consumer inkjet market. It has other products and will still be around but you can’t help wondering, considering the contempt it has for customers and its inability to embrace competition, for how long.
