Ink Cartridge: Are you really getting your money's worth?

Printer Ink Cartridges are expensive

It is a known fact that the printer ink cartridges can be pretty expensive. Most of the times, people have to be at the mercy of the companies who sells the costly cartridges.

Companies take advantage of the fact that the ink is a requirement. The price of the cartridge will depend on your computer’s brand. If you have big brands like HP, Epson and Cannon then, don’t be surprise of the high price tag that it comes along with the ink cartridge. You will find it very hard to get any sales on the ink cartridge or get a bargain on the net.

Low ink signal doesn’t mean low ink cartridge

Things get even worse when you get warning which is set in the printer to replace the ink cartridge. Every time this warning will come even when there is plenty of ink left. It is a waste of ink when you tend to change the cartridge whenever there is a warning. It can also cost you quite a deal with the high cost of the cartridge.

You also need to be aware of certain tactics adopted by certain brands. It is said that in some cases some companies has embedded a chip on its ink cartridges which stops the ink flow after it reaches a certain level. This happens even when the cartridge still has some ink in it. The reasons given why they have put the cut off system is to prevent the printer from running out of ink or get bad quality prints. Well these excuses seem a bit weak. According to some researchers the leftover ink that is there in the cartridge after it is cut off actually can print 35% more pages even when the cartridge warns that they are out of ink.

The customers are already frustrated by the high cost of the ink cartridge and on top if that the companies use such tactics mention about. This will increase the outrage of the customers more than before.

There is though good information that the Office of Fair Trading is scrutinizing the high cost of the printer ink. They have laid an accusation against the manufacturer on the base of transparency of the ink cost. They have also requested an industry standard for leveling the ink cartridge to be created. Maybe this is the silver lining but still you cannot expect the cost to be low. 

How to maximize your printer ink cartridge lifespan

The first thing you can do is to find for generic brands for the ink cartridge on the net or in the retail stores. These brands are almost next to the top products with an affordable price. There is hardly any difference in the ink quality and on the printed documents.

The second thing you can do is to stop worrying over the warning that pops up every time. Try to keep using the ink until the print quality starts fading. After that you can replace it with the generic brands. You can also try the refill kit so that you can do the refilling by yourself. This method will prove to be cheaper than getting those branded cartridge.