It's not unlikely. A while ago I had to deal with a laser printer that automatically reported the end of the drum's life after 15000 pages or so, even if there were no signs of stripes on the printed pages. The solution was to stick a 220 ohm resistor on the electric contacts between the drum and the rest of the printer. The printer would sense the resistor (which is present on genuine new drums too) as a signal to reset the page counter. Once the resistor gives a puff of smoke it can be removed, and the old drum can be used until its true end of life.

> A clogged filter can stress the fan motor which can A) increase power consumption and B)reduce overall product life.

you got it completely backwards, unless you have a very fancy and expensive ECM motor.

Increasing resistance decreases power draw, as the fan needs to do less work. You can test this by hooking up a vaccum cleaner to a killawatt and blocking the intake.

There may be concerns about cooling the motor, but it really doesn't take that much air movement to dissipate heat.

And it is for the consumer to decide which path to take. Not the product itself.