Re:Forced to sell chipless ink cartridges, Canon tells custo...
by jfengel on Sunday January 09, 2022 @12:53PM
(#29865641)
There is a real world advantage to having the quality product get out there at lower cost.
In a perfect world people would know both the total cost of ownership and the value of quality to them, and have the means of financing their purchase over time. But in practice, any of those points can fail, leading to people making worse choices due to lack of information or cash on hand. In the worst case a better product may simply not come to market for fear of people buying low quality but low price.
That's not to say it's what's going on here. But I wouldn't say it's always necessarily immoral to offer low up front costs and make it up on the recurring ones, at least as long as they are open about it.
In a perfect world people would know both the total cost of ownership and the value of quality to them, and have the means of financing their purchase over time. But in practice, any of those points can fail, leading to people making worse choices due to lack of information or cash on hand. In the worst case a better product may simply not come to market for fear of people buying low quality but low price.
That's not to say it's what's going on here. But I wouldn't say it's always necessarily immoral to offer low up front costs and make it up on the recurring ones, at least as long as they are open about it.