The price of Ink Cartridges

tanith

Can anybody please tell me why it costs so much to buy new Ink Cartridges for my HP printer... I have tried having them refilled and found that they ran out again after a few weeks I tried buying cheap Tesco ones and they never had in the exact ones I needed so I had to go buy the HP ones and its cost me twice the price I could get a new basic printer with cartridges for....aaaarrrhhhgggg it makes me so mad that I have to budget to afford ink for my printer..... :mad: :mad: :mad:

gyzmo

I have a HP and can fully sympathise. 3rd party or reconditioned cartridges are so expensive. I worked out that it would be cheaper for me to buy a new canon or Lexmark printer, and buy 3rd party cartidges for it, rather than buy two ink cartridges for my HP. something I never thought about when I bought the printer....

problem is that my HP is so damned good. Can't have my cake and eat it!

(BTW, Partners have a good offer on 3rd party cartidges (buy 2, get 1 free).

RedOnRed

The problem with HP print cartridges is that they also have the print head within the cartridge and a lot of circuitry which makes them far more pricier then standard ink cartridges that don't.

I remember the first time I went out and bought new cartridges for the HP printer I used to have, they came to about £50. The printer was only £80 new!

Another thing I noticed with my HP printer was in the first year I hardly used, but almost exactly a year after buying it the cartridges were flagged as needing replacing. It was almost as if there was some sort of timer built into them.

I now have a Canon printer and the cartridges just contain ink and only cost a couple of quid each, if that.

hjb123

I have an Epson printer which has 6 different cartridges. The way I have found the cheapest is Ebay. I always buy them on a buy it now on ebay - the genuine ones as have had problems with the cheap ones in the past - and get them alot cheaper. I normally get all 6 genuine Epson cartridges delivered for under £20, where as in the shops they retail at about £13 each. I dont normally buy on an auction on ebay except at last minute if they are still cheap - it much cheaper to find a buy it now!

tanith

Glad I am not only one that gets mad at this, I am seriously contemplating just going and buying a simple basic printer and finding another home for this licence to print money thing that I have sitting here..... :rotfl:

Trouble is my grandkids print more stuff than I do :eek:

IvanOpinion

Printers are basically sold at knock down prices (often at a lost) just to get you to buy ... they also often only come with half-filled cartridges .. they know that someone somewhere will buy their overpriced cartridges and fund the low cost printers.

I have an Epson R200 which comes with 6 cartrdiges ... last time I replaced them I got two full sets plus 2 spare black cartridges for about £25 inc P&P from ChoiceStationary.

Ivan

gyzmo

IvanOpinion wrote:

I have an Epson R200 which comes with 6 cartrdiges

Six cartridges???:eek: I thought you got two - black and colour! Are other brands the same? Sounds like a bit of hassle to me. No wonder they are so cheap if you need to buy that many of them!

IvanOpinion

Definitely 6 ... there is black, cyan, magenta, yellow, light cyan and light magenta. The advantage is that when you run out of one colour you only need to replace that colour instead of throw away an entire cartridge that may still have the other colours half full.

Ivan

hjb123

Yep Im on the same situation as Ivan - in fact I think they are the same cartridges - my printers an Epson R300. Some of the colours go alot quicker than others but I always buy a full set when I buy them at the moment and at the moment have an extra two cartridges of one of the blues at the moment. I would never buy them in a shop again unless I ran out unprepared and was very very very desperate!

nomoneytoday

I bought a Canon to avoid this. Refills are £1 for B&W, £2.40 for colour

Lexmark/Dell are IMHO the worst. £10 for the printer, £30 for a cartridge :eek: It encourages wastefulness!

gyzmo

Are Canon any good? I resent paying the price for my HP cartridges, but the HP printer is soooo good! If Canon are just as good as HP, I would swap.

Couldn't be doing with all those cartridges though on Lexmark - have a hard enough time keeping up with what month it is, never mind what cartridge has so much ink in it!