Fed up with outrageous printer ink prices, I finally decided to delve into the shadowy world of third-party ink.
I did my research, or so I thought - ordered some black ink cartridges from a reputable site (for a third of the price of the proprietary brand ink) and made sure they were the right kind. They arrived and I just installed one and tested it.
Total garbage. Prints barely visible lines, and erratically at that. Made sure I ran all the printer maintenance operations I could (nozzle cleaning/alignment etc.) but alas, it’s still not printing for shit.
Oh well, I knew going into it that I was taking a risk and that people have reported mixed results when it comes to black market ink (NPI). I guess I wasn’t one of the lucky ones. Wonder if I call and bitch enough I can get the supplier to refund my money - even if I can’t though, lesson learned. Sigh.
Anyone else have third-party ink stories, either successful or catastrophic?
For what it’s worth, I have an HP printer and I’ve always had the best of luck with black-market ink. Whenever I’m in Houston I always stop at a store and stock up. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the name of the store or the street it’s on. I just know what exit to take off of the freeway to get to it.
I think your success with 3rd part ink depends greatly on where you get it from.
Do you not have a place nearby that will refill your ink cartridges? My Walgreens does it, for example. They will refill it and test it in store. If it doesn’t work, no charge.
I run strictly third-party cartridges in both my HP printers, at home and at work. No problems at all. But I deal with a company that also sends a return bag for the empty carts so they can be recycled, so it shows a commitment to the program, not just a grab for cheap bucks.
I tried out Costco’s ink cartridge refills last month for my HP printer and have had no problems with the first one. It seems to be lasting longer than the HP ones. And if it doesn’t work, just bring it back, no questions asked.
If your main printing needs involve text, and you don’t print very much in color, then ditch the crappy inkjet altogether and get yourself a mono laser printer.
You can get a wireless laser printer from a reputable maker like Samsung or Brother or HP for under $100. It will print at least 20 pages per minute, the quality is good, you won’t waste half your ink/toner with long cleaning cycles, and while the cartridges are a bit expensive, they are much cheaper (on a cost-per-page basis) than inkjets.
Hell, even color laser printers have come done a lot in the past few years; you can now get one comfortably under $200.
Eons ago I had a small drill bit, a hypodermic needle, and a bottle of black water-soluble ink. When the ink cart was running low I’d drill a hole in the plastic and inject 100cc or so of ink. Worked quite well after doing the head-cleaning thingie a couple times.
That was in the era before I had a color injket printer.
Will they do toner refills for laser cartridges, too? My HP CLJ1600 is very soon going to need C, M, and Y (I’ve already refilled K once), and buying HP-brand cartridges will cost me more than the printer did.
I use a cheap ($33 from ebay) Continuous Ink System with my Epson R300 (the one I use is similar, but not identical to this). It cuts the ink costs by a factor of 10, at least. The print quality is at least as good as with genuine Epson inks, after calibration. i don’t know (and really don’t care) about the longevity of the prints. It takes a LOT of patience to unclog the nozzles after letting the printer sit for a long time, so I try to print something on a regular basis.
Slight nitpick, are you sure you don’t mean 10cc? 100cc would be quite alot. My Canon ones are about 12 mls (cc’s) to refill.
I use Island Inkjet to buy bottles of black ink and refill with a syringe. I get about 6 or 8 refills per original printer cartridge before it craps out. (For a while that printer was the work horse of a small office, now it is barely used) I go to the store though and get them to refill the colour one, that is too fiddly with three colours in one cartridge.
I haven’t had any luck with off-brands. Oh, every once in a while I’d get a good one…for a while. I’ve tried Cartridge World, used Ink Stop, bought from Staples and Office Max…either my HP printer would print fine for a few weeks, then just run out of ink, or it would render my printer unusable and no amount of convincing would get it to recognize the cartridge as being Full Of Ink. So I went back to HP cartridges, and lo, and behold! it prints great, and the ink lasts forever. Instead of having to buy new cartridges every couple of months, the HP ones lasted nearly 9 months! Much more cost effective for me.
My brother orders some off-brand cartridges that work well for him, but I’m not that organized…and he doesn’t have an HP printer. Whatever he buys seems to work well for him…I think the logo has a carrot on it.
A lot of people seem to use HP, I have an Epson brand printer and the ink I need for it is slightly less common, so that might be part of the reason I had bad luck.
I took a few old cartridges to Costco. They told me that my color cartridge was too dried out to work. But they filled two of my black ones. She told me that one of them was iffy and that I could return it if it didn’t work. I took it home and popped it into the printer. I just printed a 33 page document and it’s working fine. For me, that was an $8 refill vs. getting a $20 new cartridge, so that’s great stuff. I hope it continues to work well.
Rigamarole, Espson isn’t on the Costco list. They only refill HP, Lexmark and Dell inkjet cartridges from the brochure that I got.