One of my many pet peeves is the totally ridiculous game that printer manufacturers – all of them – play. They price their printers at such incredibly low prices and ship them with half filled cartridges of ink and then get out the weigh scales for their pound of flesh when you go to buy ink refills. For example I bought my HP Photosmart C5280 All-in-One on sale at Staples for $39.95. Three weeks later I had to go and buy a color refill cartridge for just shy of $30.00 – it was on special. I still have yet to pick up the black ink cartridge – the dual package of both cartridges would have been approaching the $70.00 range.

It’s a stupid game that besides the ecological implications of making the printers cheaper to buy than the ink it uses makes us really pissed off consumers. This must be the thinking behind a new ad campaign from Kodak that started airing last night called Feeling Ripped Off?

DUH! what took you so long – of course consumers are getting ripped off, how nice of you to notice Kodak but it’s a shame it took an economic recession for you to get the idea. An idea that is very similar to Microsoft’s recent “I’m a PC” ad campaign that centered in on the price rather than the ‘cool’ factor.

[hat tip to Ryan Spoon]