[German]The printer manufacturer Brother is also trying a subscription model for inks and toners – similar to HP. The whole thing is currently being tested in France, and Germany will follow at some point.
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Printer manufacturer HP has been offering its HP Instant Ink subscription for quite some time now – I reported about it in the blog post Take care: HP Instant Ink. With HP Instant Ink, the monthly fee is based on the number of printed pages and not on ink consumption. Now I became aware of Brother's comparable approach via the following tweet from German site Druckerchannel.
In this German article, the folks at Druckerchannel write that Brother is also entering the consumables subscription business with "EcoPro" including fixed page allotments. With the "EcoPro" subscription introduced in France, Belgium and the Netherlands, the customer books "page packages" with fixed prices. This means that they are not billed according to toner or ink consumption, but according to the number of pages printed. This means that the filling level of a page during printing has no influence on the price.
(Source: YouTube)
Brother offers the subscription for inkjet printers and also b/w lasers. According to Druckerchannel, there are packages for 50, 100, 300 and 500 pages per month. The prices for the toner subscription are consistently slightly lower than for the inkjet printers. The video above explains the subscription in French, which starts at 1.99 euros per month for toner and goes up to 3.99 euros per month for ink. So laser printer subscriptions are cheaper than for inkjet printers. The subscription is supposed to be cancelable on a monthly basis. Furthermore, users can switch to a different tariff each month. Print pages not used in the month can be carried over to up to two subsequent months.
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However, Brother charges a surcharge of 10 cents per page for increased printing requirements. For Brother A3 office printers, there is an additional charge: Each A3 page printed is counted as two pages in the page quota for the month. However, Brother provides an extended printer warranty during the subscription. Details about the program as well as prices for the monthly packages can be found on Druckerchannel in this article.
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