Over 10% Price Increase on HP’s Cartridges

Originally written and published at portlandtribune.com

HP raises ink & Laser toner prices, AGAIN!!

HP raised pricing on more than 300 inkjet & laser toner cartridges by 5% to 10%+, on 12/1/17. Increased pricing was immediately implemented by the Office Depots of the world. This followed similar annual price increases on HP cartridges in recent years.

Besides HP’s obvious desire to increase revenue and margin on installed printers, some speculate it is also an effort to “force” consumers and businesses to “upgrade” to newer generation printers. Doing so rarely reduces the cost of printing. New printers perpetuates users to fall in to the trap of using ‘low yield” or “standard” replacement cartridges after the “set up” or “introductory” cartridges quickly empty instead of replacing them with the better value ‘high yield’ cartridges.

The same marketing slight of hand applies to the Valu Pack pricing vs. individual high yield cartridges. The actual cost per page is higher.

Another unfortunate consequence of price increases is the practice of the Office Depots of the world, which now markup in-store cartridge pricing in by several dollars over their listed web pricing.