Oh yeah, we're going there.
It started long ago. In the beginning, making copies of business documents - memo's, invoices, reports - was slow and tedious.
So we built devices to perform these duties.
Thousands of moving parts, heat, static electricity and heavy handed employees contributed to a dynamic and precarious environment - they required a good amount of attention.
To put it bluntly, our machines broke down so often we needed a way to pay for technicians.
To support the machines in field the 'industry' hatched a plan:
"Why don't we sell service with the machines? We'll make it impossible for anyone else to supply our devices, so we'll combine service and supplies into a billable line item, determined by how many pages come out of our devices...and will call these 'clicks' after the noise a meter makes with every copy and call the billing model Cost Per Copy..."
Genius, really.
Oh sure, there were other schemes - blending ...
Read the rest, here.