Tuesday, November 20, 2007

The Economics of Ink Cartridges

The black ink in my printer has run out again. It seems like I just bought ink. I went down to Staples and found my ink cartridge... around $18 for one (there are 5 ink cartridges total in my printer, so about $90 to replace all of them). Being somewhat of a cheapskate, I decided to go back to my online searching I had done before to see what I could find. For $8.40 I can get a generic cartridge shipped to me. Granted, I have to move the electronic chip from my old cartridge to the new one, but they provide easy to follow directions. Has anyone else had any dealings with non-manufacturer ink cartridges? What have you found? Is the hassle and risk of non-manufacturer ink cartridges worth the savings?

4 comments:

"Nick" said...

I use them A LOT at work. We actually use an ink refill kit that fills about 2 or 3 cartridges for less than the cost of a new cartridge. We also get the "re-manufactured" cartridges.

Yours sound a bit different than ours. We don't have to move any chips or anything.

They have always worked fine (until after you fill them about 3 times, then they stop holding much ink).

The cartridges work great. No problems that I recall.

CRCHAIR said...

We have had nothing but problems at work with "re-manufactured" cartridges. We have tried them a couple of times and each time they did not work or worked only briefly. I will not buy them again.

Nomad said...

I still think it is criminal that printer companies are allowed to insert chips into their ink carts to keep you from using generic ones.

quizwedge said...

The problem is that the printer companies have switched their model to lose money on the printer and make it up on the ink. I don't know if that's still the case... they may now be making money on both. Either way, they've painted themselves into a corner. If they could bring it back to making money on a quality printer and the ink just being gravy, then they could offer quality ink at affordable prices and not have to try to use chips to protect their bottom line.