On 07/01/2021 22:33, newshound wrote:
****ed off with Ebuyer and Lexmark. At the beginning of December my
cheap Brother mono laser had a toner leak inside. Changed the cartridge
but still making messy prints, I was too busy to grovel around inside so
I picked up a similar looking £100 Lexmark from Ebuyer (showing
reasonable reviews on Amazon, but faster delivery from eBuyer).

Six weeks on, the low capacity cartridge is out, at which point I find
it seems to have a "chip" like inkjet ones, nothing third party
available, and cartridge prices vary from £50 for 1300 pages to over
£200 for 6k. And nothing with fast delivery.

You didn't check that third party ink cartridges were available before
you bought a printer? That is *the* way to get royally ripped off.

Though I confess I have done it once with the colour Dell laser printer
because of its for the time almost photoreal colour reproduction.

Fortunately for me the thing was so hard to assemble correctly without
breaking it that huge numbers of damaged ones were available from Morgan
with 3 sets of OEM cartridges for the same price as a new one. So I
bought a second one from them just to get the toner cartridges. By the
time they ran out aftermarket compatible toner cartridges were
available. I had the original from new. I have just had to swap to the
other one after the original print engine finally gave up the ghost.

Colour reproduction is now nothing special by comparison with the latest
generation of lasers (especially on cheap toner at £20 a set CMYK).

Seems to me Lexmark are taking the ****, Ebuyer too. I have had a
Lexmark colour laser for a couple of years and that has been fine. I
must have put about ten cartridges at less than £20 a time through the
Brother. And a couple of replacement "drums".

I've had various HP and Dell lasers over the past 20 years or so, and
never had this sort of problem before.

They all do it to some extent on their newest printers. They make most
of their money from selling the consumables. Aftermarket toner/ink
suppliers generally crack the chips within 12 a year or so.

So be careful out there if you are in the market!

It was ever thus.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown