Have you noticed all of these printer cartridge refiller businesses popping up in strip malls across the country? You know, those places where someone uses a syringe to re-fill an ink cartridge (almost sounds like an addiction) or where used toner cartridges are opened and colored plastic is poured in. Many people think they are saving a lot of money by buying remanufactured printer cartridges. However, there are costs that these users probably haven’t considered.
In a study by QualityLogic, remanufactured cartridges were shown to have significant reliability problems, canceling out initial cost savings to consumers. Approximately 70 percent of all inkjet and 80 percent of toner cartridges displayed problems from leaking cartridges, cross-contaminated colors and cartridges that printed no pages. Furthermore, 17 percent of all remanufactured inkjet cartridges failed prematurely. These are clear hard costs that outstrip any potential savings.
Put in another light, the cost of using remanufactured cartridges can be more than just the price of the cartridge. Our printed output represents the quality of our work and ideas. To have this output disparaged due having the colors look wrong is hardly worth the perceived cost savings.
Also, most people (myself included) are editing, thus printing, their highest profile documents on a deadline. You know, there’s a meeting where you have to sell something in and you want to present crisp color documents and a presentation. Just imagine the cost of losing a project/deal/promotion for the sake of trying to save a few bucks on a “remanufactured” printer cartridge.
HP Colorsphere toner cartridges and Vivera Ink cartridges have been specifically designed to give the optimum image quality from the first print to the last print. HP Sure Supply is a free tool that first alerts you as to when your toner or ink cartridge is running low. The hosted Sure Supply program then finds exactly what cartridge your printer needs, checks availability and sets you up to order online from your preferred retailer or directly from HP.
To actively explore how to compare printer cartridges, you’ll want to visit the related HP sites for toner or related ink issues. Another aspect to consider is that HP is a leader in print cartridge recycling. In fact, we recycled approximately 140 million pounds of hardware and print cartridges globally in 2005. Very often those “recycling” bins you see for remanufactured cartridges are actually just giving cartridges to companies so they can sell them back to you, at a greatly decreased level of quality.
Information disclosed in this community becomes public.
Exercise caution when deciding to disclose your personal information.
HP reserves the right, but is not obligated to, edit or remove your comment if it contains personally identifiable information or other content HP deems unacceptable.
Opinions expressed are your personal opinions or those of the original authors, and not of HP.
Please see HP's web Terms of Use for more details.
