The Ethics of Expiration

[Phi for All]

My Dell printer told me it was low on black ink a while back. It gave me a little gauge showing that this was true. Then it told me my color cartridge was low as well (along with an identical gauge). I didn't really believe it, so I decided to test it out.

 

I've printed just over 100 pages since then, and neither the black nor the color has dropped a single pixel. I like the printer and the extra pages since it started urging me to replace the cartridges have been just as consistently well-printed as any others. I will continue to print until I see signs of missing ink. But how many people just trust the manufacturer’s recommendations? How many people would have changed the cartridges when their printer recommended it, throwing away perfectly good ink, which I’m told is priced at seven times the cost of Dom Perignon champagne?

 

My virus protection service is up in December, yet the service sends me alerts implying that it would be best to sign up for another year *now*, two months early. Since they aren’t pro-rating my payment, I have to wonder why they would openly seek to screw me out of two months of service I’ve already paid for.

 

I think this all goes beyond caveat emptor. These specific manufacturers are implying that I may be harming my equipment if I don’t act on their recommendations. Besides being deceitful, I think it’s harmful because it makes me question expiration dates on other products, products where expiration dates may be much more important. I can use my nose to confirm if my milk has expired, but what about that big bottle of ibuprofen I couldn’t pass up at Costco last year? Will it hurt me to keep taking them, or will they just not be as effective? Or is the infamously greedy pharmaceutical company just trying to get me to buy more quickly?

 

I get the feeling in some instances that manufacturers are hiding behind an expiration “shield” that lets them warn us in overly strong terms about something that is merely a slight probability. Does anyone have any facts about expiration ethics or products where expiration awareness is either terribly important or not remotely applicable? Does anyone have any anecdotes or studies about other instances of expiration ethics?

[DrP]

My mate was trying to print a thesis out once on an inkjet that was starting to run out of ink. Not wanting to waste money buying a new cartridge for a few 10s of pages we took out the cartridge and shookit 'downwards' trying to get any ink in there that may have been clinging to the sides down to the bottem of the cartridge, where it could be used. This worked a bit. Then I thought that if we heated the cartridge up with a flame on either side, the ink viscocity would decrease and teh stuff would floww to the bottem of the cartridge upon shaking alot easier. This worked well.

 

So - when it does finally look as though the cart is running out - take it out, heat it up with a lighter on either side, and then shake it (flicking it downwards to wards the heads - trying to project the remaining ink towards the bottem) - it'll be good for another 50-100 pages or so. You can repeat this several times!

[npts2020]

Expiration dates for most products are set well before the first expected failure of a non-defective item. It would do you no good to tell you the cartridge needs changing after you are already out of ink but you have to keep in mind that it is to somebody's advantage to sell as many cartridges as possible, also. Many people will automatically change it but I tend to try to squeeze every drop I can out, like you guys.

 

I can't speak to your antivirus mail (spam?) but a computer geek friend of mine recommended AV6 antivirus at free.avg.com and I have had no trouble since, although it has only been a month so far. Another geek friend swears that his apple needs no antivirus protection because of the difference between windows and apple programming, his has been on line at least 3 years with no adverse effect. That is as much as I know about that topic (mostly what friends have told me).

 

Medicines are a different matter. All medicines that I am aware of lose effectiveness over time. Having said that, I know that I have taken aspirin (not recently) that was at least two decades old and survived to tell about it so I cant imagine that many over-the-counter medicines would pose much of a threat from simply being outdated. A doctor or chemist would know better than I. BTW big pharma wants you to buy as much of their most expensive medicine as they can sell you (how many drug ads compared to other products are in the media?).

 

Most expiration dates have some basis in reality (I would say all but I have seen them on things like bottled water!) and can be used for reference. Depending on how critical it is you can ignore many of them but things like medicines, food, and replacement parts for a nuclear power plant I would not push it too far, my ingesting ancient aspirins notwithstanding.

[YT2095]

these cartridges work on a "how many times was I used counter" chip, they don`t have an ink level sensor, they`re pretty Dumb chips (intentionally so? Maybe).

they Are resettable (yes some printers even refuse to Work if the chip says so).

Continuous Ink systems are the best IMO, they may look a bit ugly but they`re well worth the trade-off for functionality

 

as for Foodstuffs, it all depends on What food, but Some, like cheeses for instance are still viable Well after their sell-by/Use-by date, at worst it may alter the "taste" a little, but I`v had Mozzarella cheese in the fridge and used it 8 months after it`s date and it was fine!

 

sadly we live in a society were litigation is rife, and much of the time these dates are put on to keep asses covered, thereby relieving the consumer of the need to apply Common Sense (it`s such hard work dontcha know!).

[Mr Skeptic]

I'd say that expiration dates are generally set well before the product is actually expected to expire. This is to cover the fact that some will inevitably expire quicker than they should. For most products you should be able to tell if they are expired, so it would do little good to tell you that. Some product will expire catastrophically and some little by little; in the case of the latter there really isn't a definite time you can say it expired.

 

However, some items (such as printer ink) are set by the manufacturer to stop working at the expiry date, regardless of whether it actually works. That is definitely unethical, since they don't mention that they do that and there is no reason why they should other than to screw their customers.

[gcol]

I refill mine using bulk ink. If I let a cartrige run out, some jets seem to be "overheated" and cease to work. I can live with the degraded quality for draft work, but my wife often runs off a print job of around 1000 pages and does not want the print to fail halfway through, as it is usually running unattended. I therefore check-weigh the cartridges regularly and refill when about 1/3 - 1/4 full. By making sure they don't dry out, an original (not necessarily a "refurb") can last 20+ refills.

 

I have a couple of dud colour cartridges that I top up with distilled water. They print very faint or not at all, but I don't get error messages through low colour ink. Perfectly acceptable when doing B&W only, which is 95% of the time. I occasionally top-up a good colour cart that I have been careful not to run dry, when required.

 

our household paper usage can vary between 500 and 2500 sheets per month, and I have not bought a new cartridge in more than 2 years. Saved one helluva load of money.

 

Printer is an old HP Deskjet 930c (vey old!)

[Pantaz]

A few years back, Epson settled a lawsuit concerning prematurely "empty" cartridges. More recently, a suit was filed against HP and Staples for "colluding to inflate the price of printer ink cartridges"

 

The OEM cartridges in my Epson CX4800 are non-resettable, but I found a refill kit with new automatic resetting chips. For the price of less than two sets of OEM cartridges I have refilled the replacements three times, and I still have enough ink for at least four more refills.

[Phi for All]

I know printer ink is expensive; industry standards favor selling the printer barely above cost and making your profit on the regular purchases of ink. This would be similar to buying a car for half the normal price, but paying four times the cost for gas and oil to fill it. It works for video games too. Nintendo marketing.

 

I'm talking about how ethical it is to deceive your customer base, the people who are paying your price, by telling them they are out of ink when they're not. How ethical is it to build in an alarm to encourage your current clients to resubscribe to your service now even though their subscription doesn't expire for three months? Industry models shouldn't be ethically disrespectful to the people who are purchasing the products, but I want to make sure this really is a question of ethics and not just accepted practice.

[gcol]

I but I want to make sure this really is a question of ethics and not just accepted practice.

 

Inasmuch as accepted business practices are often unethical (and even arguably immoral, like perhaps prostitution) I think the two are inextricably linked.