Canon Sued Over All-in-One Printer That Stops Scanning When It Runs Out of Ink

A buyer fed up with the tyranny of residence printers is suing Canon for disabling multiple functions on an all-in-one printer when it runs out of ink.

Consumer printer makers have lengthy used the razor blade enterprise mannequin—so named after corporations who promote razor handles for reasonable, however the appropriate alternative blades at a lot increased costs. Printers able to producing impressive-looking shade prints at residence are surprisingly reasonably priced, however that’s as a result of the vast majority of the revenue comes from the over-priced alternative ink cartridges. More typically than not, these residence printers will change into utterly disabled by software program when only a single shade cartridge runs low, forcing homeowners to maintain shopping for replacements, even when they solely intend to print black-and-white textual content.

The creation of units like smartphones and even social media have made sharing pictures digitally a lot simpler, which implies shoppers are printing pictures much less and fewer. That has had an impact on the profitability of residence printers, which has led to corporations like Epson introducing printers (its EcoTank line) which can be less expensive and simpler to refill, and don’t utterly shut down when one sort of ink runs low. But not each printer maker goes that route, as David Leacraft found.

Leacraft, who is known as because the plaintiff in a class-action complaint against Canon filed in a U.S. federal court docket in New York final week, discovered that their Canon Pixma MG6320 all-in-one printer would now not scan or fax paperwork when it was out of ink, regardless of neither of these capabilities requiring any printing in any respect. According to Bleeping Computer, it’s a difficulty that dates again to no less than 2016 when different prospects reported the identical drawback to Canon by the corporate’s on-line boards, and have been instructed by the corporate’s help folks that every one the ink cartridges have to be put in and comprise ink to make use of the entire printer’s options.

The grievance factors out that Canon promotes its all-in-one printers as having a number of distinct options, together with printing, copying, scanning, and typically even faxing, but without any warnings that these options are depending on adequate ranges of ink being accessible.

“Canon does not represent or warn consumers that ink is a necessary component in order to scan or fax documents. As a result, consumers are forced to incur unexpected and unnecessary burden and expense in the form of ink purchases or in the alternative be unable to scan or fax documents using the so-called all-in-one device,” the grievance states. It additionally asserts, “There is no reason or technical basis for manufacturing the All-in-One Printers with an ink level detection function that causes the scanner to stop functioning when ink is low or empty. Canon designed the All-in-One Printers in such a way to require consumers to maintain ink in their devices regardless of whether they intend to print. The result is an increase in ink sales from which Canon obtains significant profits.”

We’ve reached out to Canon for touch upon the lawsuit and can replace after we hear again.

The class-action complaint, with greater than 100 members, is looking for no less than $5,000,000, a requirement for a jury trial, and cites properly over 20 fashions of Canon all-in-one printers as exhibiting this problematic habits. Depending on the result, and whether or not the courts permit it to maneuver ahead, anybody who bought one of many referenced all-in-one Canon fashions might be eligible for compensation.