Question Printer ink question

[yossibac]

Hi all
Is it legitimate to purchase ink from eBay or Amazon that might not be original?
Are there any rules to it? Or anyone to its own decision?
Thanks for looking.

 

[bill001g]

This is mostly a greed thing from the printer manufactures. Previously they almost gave away the printers because they knew they would make much more profit forcing you to buy ink from them.
They did lots of things to prevent you from buying third party ink.

If you listen to the marketing lies they say its because they want to ensure the quality of the print out. They claim things like the heads only have some fixed amount of life span. None of these companies actually manufacture the ink themselves they all buy from some manufacture in china.

You can get ink that is as good if not better than some printer manufactures sell. What is much harder is if the printer manufacture directly attempts to prevent you from using third party vendors by placing electronics in the print cartridges that say print only xxx pages no matter if these is ink left or not.

 

[geofelt]

Legitimate, certainly.
Is it a good thing to do? perhaps.
Sometimes non original ink will not have the same quality or other issues.

 

[punkncat]

We have been using aftermarket carts and drums for years now. We have to find fairly specific brands that are actually refilling/refurbishing the "OEM" parts as there is some manner of DRM (if that is the right thing to call it) built into the printer where it doesn't work with all off brand refills. The single biggest issue we run into is the ink cart saying it is empty well before it actually is. Oftentimes we can pull it out, shake it around and put it back for another round of use, sometimes it just refuses to accept that and we have to dispose of a half full cart.

 

[Ralston18]

Not a direct answer to the orignial post and just offering a personal viewpoint and experience.

Make and model printer?

I have a HP Office Jet Pro 9015.

Seemed to go through individual ink cartridges very fast. Tried to save the color cartridges by printing with just black but was not successful. (Black can be made, and apparently was being made, by mixing the other colors. )

And I also ran into the problem of not even being able to use very new ink cartridges from a neighbor who had the same model printer that had ink problems. She could not use my ink cartridges either.

Ink cartridges, a full set, increased in price to over $100 USD via big box store purchases. Normal usage being going through a set in 7 - 8 months. But then the time span started getting shorter despite attempts to conserve ink.

So I signed up for the automatic ink renewal program at $6.99 month. A year being around $84 USD.

My original set of cartridges (mailed directly to me) are still in use after several months now and no replacement cartridges have been necessary or sent. ( May be getting close though according to the printer's status report.)

However, the monthly cost is only if I use 100 sheets of paper or less. If I go over 100 pages then the monthly charge goes up by $1.00 for every extra 10 pages. That has happened a couple of times and I am beginning to question the page counting. 100 pages a month is roughly 3 pages a day and I do not print anywhere near that number of pages. And I have the option to increase the monthly page allowance for just another dollar or two per month. TBD....

Bottom line being I am using OEM cartridges, thus far still saving money versus purchasing retail/big box store cartridges, and not putting the printer at risk for substandard or counterfeit ink cartridges.

Take a look at what, if anything, the printer manufacturer offers with respect to refill plans etc.. Just pay close attention to the fine print, and take a careful look at how much printing you anticipate by week or month. Plus keep some good records on how much you actually print.

The question of using third party inks, etc. may be rendered moot.

 

[yossibac]

Not a direct answer to the original post and just offering a personal viewpoint and experience.
Make and model printer?

Hi. I was referring to that printer (please see link)
In the meantime it went for recycling and I purchased a Brother Laser colour printer to replace it and still not having to buy new cartridge, as it is more economic.

Question - Canon Pixma MG5350 with B200 Error

I have B200 error on Canon Pixma MG5350 It says TURN OFF. CALL CANON. It happened after software installation, so I suspect that Canon decided not to let us use the printer any more. I emailed Canon and they offered 20% discount on a new printer, what a laugh. I played with it a bit more and...

forums.tomshardware.com