Stop Lying To Me

I like my printer. It's an Oki colour laser.
Works really well, was a good price, networks to my computers relatively easily, and the output is quite clear.

But I don't know if I'd buy another one from this company.

For at least three months it's been giving me an error message saying that the black print cartridge needs replacement. Usually it's just a warning, but sometimes it actually stops printing. At that point, I just remove the cartridge and put it back in. I don't even have to shake it. It then prints just fine for a week or so before doing it again.

I realize that printer companies make most of their money from selling ink. But I don't think they need to resort to lying. It's one thing to have a message telling me that I should get a new cartridge because the current one is almost empty. It's something completely different, though, if it's actually pretending that there's no more ink.

As in previous examples I've written about, this tactic seems silly (if it's intentional and not a technical error): why risk losing me as a customer just to sell me an extra ink cartridge or two? The ink actually lasts a really long time. It's quite efficient. I should be telling everybody about how great it is that I can print thousands of pages on my Oki printer without changing a cartridge.

They've managed to change a great product attribute into something negative.