Leading consumer advocate organisation Choice has slagged off printer manufacturers and has accused them of selling inks at exorbitant prices.

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According to Choice, consumers need to be wary of being ripped off by printer inks that cost up to $20 a teaspoon and use microchips to prevent you using cheaper alternatives.

Tests with 13 multifunction printers showed the cost of ink could be extortionate. Choice says that if you printed five B+W pages, three colour pages and one photo every day for a year costed over three years one brand would cost $9436 to run.

And while you can buy cheaper genuine replacement cartridges overseas, you often can’t use them with the Australian-bought printer because the microchip attached to the ink cartridge must match the country.

“They do this to stop legal parallel importation (also known as grey importation). Another effect of the addition of a chip is that third party ink manufacturers have a much harder job competing,” says the report.

Choice spokesman Christopher Zinn said, “The printer manufacturers own the patents for the chips which means third party competitors can’t legally copy them. The competition is frozen out and consumers pay more.”

See choice.com.au for the full multifunction printer review and comparison.