Well its ink that the printer companies sell, not printers. Quite frankly they would happily give their ink jets away for free (and some pretty much do if you count the cost of the cartridge included) in order for you to buy their ink.
Currently ink runs at a far greater cost that extremelely expensive French Champagne, and probably tastes better. Some colour cartridges come equiped to run out of one colour as quickly as possible.
I'm not particularly surprised that they ofered you a new printer though cheaper refills are a must.
Then again you can happily get a laser printer for far less per page than an inkjet....