Cartridges that go bad after a set amount of pages regardless of the ink level. Quality of printing going down over time just so that a technician can reset a counter. High prices.
I thought that maybe the digitalisation of paper work had made the margins so thin that the only way to go forward was to resort to the mess that we have right now. But afaik the same was true 20 years ago.
In particular, there is some brand that was praised for consumer friendly practices here on HN that joined the dark side recently too; Brother iirc.
Most people I know "print at work", and they don't want to have a printer because when they did have one, the experience was atrocious.
People that do print at home, are mostly photographers that want physical prints of their photos.
I wonder if there's anyone here who worked in the industry and could provide some insight.