The first man to reputedly give away a product and then wait for the customer to come back was King Gillette, inventor of the safety razor. He knew you’d be back for blades and that’s how he wanted to make money. And that’s how he did make money. Then came the cell phones, but they didn’t come all the way. They want to make money out of your calls and not from the phones. Third in line are the printer manufacturers who just know you’ll be knocking on their door soon after you buy one.

A bargain?

The inkjet printer you just bought after much deliberation, checking the reviews and speaking to your friends was a real bargain, right? Wrong! You haven’t started paying yet. That printer cost less than a set of replacement cartridges. It may be cheaper in many cases to simply replace the printer when the first lot of ink runs out.

I have often taken a Payday Cash Advance Loan to pay for ink refills. And then I’m out of ink again before I’ve repaid the loan

Those manufacturers

When you buy a printer, it may often have “starter” tanks with enough ink to whet your appetite, enough to print just a few pages. By then you’re hooked by the print quality, smoothness, speed and good looks and you’re off to the shops for your first set of expensive replacements.

Other options to ink cartridges

Soon you will be trying compatible, refilled or generic ink cartridges, anything to save money. There are hundreds of alternatives to a manufacturer’s original ink cartridges, with varying levels of success. Some of them work just fine and others are a disaster, especially when you try and do your own filling from a large bottle. I once spilt ink from a liter bottle onto a cement tile floor and it soaked in before I could clean it up. I guess the people who live in that apartment now have a large carpet!

In the end when it comes to the quality of photographic printouts, fade resistance and longevity of the ink, original manufacturers’ inks have been a lot better.

The ink industry

Manufacturing “alternative ink” is big business nowadays and there seems to be no regulation. It is difficult to apply quality control to a “backyard” or in this case “bathroom” industry which is based on re-engineering cartridges which are designed to withstand such attempts. The industry is by no means illegal but it has a certain something about it.

The original manufacturers

These people go to extraordinary lengths to ensure their cartridges are not refilled. Some of them use a layer of goo injected above the ink level which blocks the print head when the ink is depleted, rendering the cartridge useless. More outrageous attempts include an “expiry date” programmed into each cartridge, after which it will not print, no matter how much ink is remaining.

Fighting the refillers

The ink cartridges include a chip or sensor which the printer uses to detect whether the cartridge is original – the cost and the patents on the chip make it difficult to reproduce the cartridges.

The alternative ink industry contends with these difficulties, and has developed ingenious methods of bypassing the restrictions. My advice? Stay clear of cartridges with a price tag that’s too good to be true.