Is it worth it to take your used printer ink cartridges and have Walgreens refill them? Give me your experiences - good and bad. Was the service up to your expectations, or did the store have no clue? Did the ink last a reasonable amount of time? Can they refill almost any model? What does it cost?
I can’t answer any of your questions except one. I have a Brother printer and neither Walgreens, Cartreidge World, Office Depot nor any other place that claims to refill printer cartridges will touch mine.
I’ve had a Dell Printer(Lexmark, I think) for 3-4 years. When Walgreen’s first started doing this in Akron, they were charging $9.95. I had an empty Dell (Black) Cartridge and they refilled it and it worked great and long. I was very satisfied. When it went empty, I took it back to Walgreen’s for another fill, but came back to pick it up and they said it failed the pressure test. No charge.
My experience says you can refill a new cartridge once, but maybe not more than once. I bought a refurbed Dell Cartridge from Office Max one time, and it also wouldn’t refill at Walgreen’s.
It’s worked well for me. Unlike samclem, I’ve had a cartridge refilled more than once.
I don’t print much, a refill lasts me about six months. The quality looks fine to me, but I only print things for myself.
Their webpage lists which brands they can refill. I have an HP printer.
One bit of info I’ll pass on. Last time I got a refill, the printer kept giving me an error message that I needed to replace the cartridge. I took it back to Walgreens and the clerk showed me to apply a damp paper towel to the side of the cartridge that has contacts on it. Not the part where ink comes out, which I had tried. It worked!
No experience with Walgreens, (I’m in Canada) so I am not sure if the OP wants my two cents, but I always got my printer cartridges refilled by island inkjet and found it reasonable. Then I started buying the bottles and filling the ink myself with a syringe. I usually get 10 refills or so per cartridge before pressure failure, dried out insides, or just messiness required tossing them. At around 20 dollars a bottle and 8-10 refills/bottle the price could not be beat.
This I only did for the black ink cartridge, my colour one (three colours in one cartridge) struck me as too big a mess and an investment in inks so I pay island inkjet to refill. This is for my Canon Pixma printer. Looking over reciepts I spent around $200 in black ink last year, thats a huge savings in cartridges.
The main thing you need to do is get it refilled right away. There’s always a bit of ink inside, and if that dries out, it can get clogged up and be unable to be refilled.
And, of course, the cartridges aren’t built to take multiple refillings. They have a planned obsolescence to force you to buy more.