T i m wrote:
But it seems it is often the case that buying a spare part or more
consumables cost disproportionately more than buying the thing new or
part.

Obviously toner is the mainline drug they're pushing, but it's almost worth
buying a second printer to store unopened, in order to have a stash of
drums, fusers, etc that you can swap into the other one for less than the
price of official spares.

I don't think I'm quite at that level of hoarding (and don't have the space)
but could imagine it would be worth doing if you were a business with a
small fleet of them.

Theo