Inkjet Cartridge Issues

The Basic Issue - Avoiding The Corporate Cartridge Gouge

Inkjet printers are truly incredible ? but unfortunately, so are the prices for replacement cartridges from the printer manufacturers. Everyone knows their prices are utterly outrageous, but some very clever - and effective - marketing techniques have convinced most of us to land-fill our empty cartridges and buy attractively-packaged, exorbitantly-priced replacements.

These tactics are used by the printer manufacturers ? the O.E.M.s ? because their business model bottom line is based on built-in obsolescence pushed to an extreme: discard a product - still in a perfectly functional condition - after a one-time use. Clearly, emptying an ink reservoir is not a valid reason to trash a cartridge, but that?s the message consumers have long been sold on.

Franchised operations such as Cartridge World and an expanding list of major retailers - even drug stores like Walgreens - have finally shattered the negative images and myths promoted by the O.E.M.s regarding refilled cartridges. With refilling credibility now firmly established, its high time for consumers to give serious consideration to refilling their own cartridges.

Fortunately, a degree in nuclear engineering isnt required to refill an inkjet cartridge ? all that?s needed is just basic common sense and a minimum of manual dexterity, plus a desire to save a very tidy sum of cash for our own use that would otherwise fatten a mega-corporation bottom line.

Refilling a cartridge is little more than a repeat of the original process - filling a small plastic box with ink - and the effort is worth a significant amount of money over the lifetime of a printer. Refilling black cartridges alone saves hundreds of dollars - much more than the purchase price of the printer itself.

Best of all, theres now available a detailed, informative consumer ?how to? guide and a new generation of refilling technology. Small computer system users interested in dramatically reducing their printing costs finally have the tools that eliminate the major concerns - both real and imagined - about refilling inkjet cartridges.

So let?s dispel the pre-conceived notions and re-consider consumer-level inkjet cartridge refilling with a new, clear perspective. For once, we can refuse to be taken advantage of by yet another predatory corporate grab. We can become self-reliant consumers - or we can willingly continue to be corporately taken. Either way, the choice is up to us...

Next in the Inkjet Cartridge Issues series: The Central Issue - Transforming Consumer Perspectives