I have been working from home a lot recently, and as such have decided to replace my knackered old printer. Nothing fancy, just a simple printer for occasional printing. No photos, or glossy brochures. Just printing.

I did a bit of research on-line and discovered that the prices of printers have dropped dramatically in the years since I last purchased one. It is also difficult to actually buy a dot-matrix nowadays.

After visiting the Staples store in Slough I settled on the HP 4300 multifunction device. According the marketing literature it is a printer, scanner, photocopier, sex toy and fax machine.

I carried it to the cash desk and went to pay for it.

“Would you like some extra ink with that?”

“No thanks, it says here that it comes with both a black and a colour cartridge.”

“Yes, but that is generally just enough to test the machine, not enough to do any real printing.”

“Oh, that’s not what it says here. It says two cartridges included. No mention whatsoever of use only for testing.”

“They’re only about 20% full. HP machines are all the same. You’ll probably get through the test pages and then it’ll run out.”

This was disappointing in the extreme. My initial cheer at finding a suitable printer in the sale was now tempered by having to spend an extra £30 on ink. I did not want to come back straight away to buy more ink, so I relented and purchased my ink there and then, at Staples.

Later that evening I set up my new printer, and checked my ink levels. I was surprised to find that both the black, and colour cartridges were almost full.

It is clear that one of two things have happened here. Either I have been extremely lucky and the tight people at HP have accidentally given me more ink with the printer than they had intended, or the staff at Staples lied to my face in order to get me to buy more ink from them.

But which is it?

I have resolved to uncover the ugly truth, and I have begun by writing two letters to the organisations concerned. Stay tuned for the next instalment of the investigation.

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