[Printers] One Consumer's Encounter with Lexmark

[Benj. Mako Hill]

<quote who="Brahm" date="Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 08:01:20PM -0600">
> I've been following the forensic dot issue since I heard about it in 
> October, and it really intrigued me. After some Google searching, I 
> realized that there weren't a whole lot of published information about 
> individual consumers taking action. The work done by the EFF and the MIT 
> crew at SeeingYellow was awesome, but I was curious to see the company's 
> response to an average consumer's inquiry.

From the MIT angle, I can say that I think we should have done a better
job of documenting the callin and such that happened. I'd be happy to
add my own, to point SeeingYellow towards others (like yours) or to
incorporate some way for people to add that information to the site.

> I started from scratch and emailed and phoned the company - after 
> getting juggled through tech support for a few months (they didn't 
> believe the forensic tracking dots existed, and replaced my 
> photoconductor units free of charge), I wrote the privacy officers of 
> Lexmark in both the US and Canada. As I went along, I tracking my 
> progress on a blog at http://brahmsyellowdots.blogspot.com/
> 
> To make a 5-month-long story short, if you write a company's privacy 
> office complaining about the tracking dot issue, they will probably 
> offer you a refund - at least that's what Lexmark did.

My own story (with HP) was pretty similar, although I never got offered
a refund. I was actually complaining about printers in my workplace so
I'm not sure I would have been able to take advantage of it, but it's
good to know.

Regards,
Mako

-- 
Benjamin Mako Hill
mako at atdot.cc
http://mako.cc/

Creativity can be a social contribution, but only in so far
as society is free to use the results. --GNU Manifesto
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