Compatible printer cartridges

sgoode

I work at a college where I am the IT manager and we do a lot of printing. Our finance department are practically forcing us into using compatible toner cartridges without properly researching it first. From my previous experience I recommended against it but they didn't listen to me. We now have had more cartridges fail than have worked, with some trully shocking quality print outs. As I predicted, it has turned into a situation where the 'guarantee' that comes with the cartridges is useless as they are blaming our printers for being at fault even though they work perfectly well once an original HP toner has been installed.

Has anyone got any comments or similar experiences?

Our finance department took advice from a supposedly ex HP employee who told them that compatible cartridges nowadays are every bit as good as originals. However he would have said that as he wanted to get the contract to supply us with these cheapo toners.

bap98189

We use compatible toners in our various printers and never had a problem. But we never buy the compatible drum units, only the actual toner cartridges. We tried various compatible or re-manufactured drum units, but each time we found about 1 in 3 failed for one reason or another. I suspect this is because drums have limited lives and whilst it is perfectly possible to refill a toner cartridge, the drum units are essentially just being cleaned up before being resold. This works out well financially as with Oki in particular the drum unit is about 40% of the price of the toner cartridges so we are still saving the majority of the money.

Unfortunately some laser printers have the toner and drum built into the same cartridge. We don't use compatibles for those.

bubblesbonbon

Going back a few years but we found that HP and Kyocera laser printers were extremely fussy about using OEM cartridges and became unreliable using compatibles. Colour lasers were definitely a no-no as expensive repair invoices were not appreciated by the bean counters.

On a similar note, the guy who used to buy our consumables decided to do a deal with a cowboy outfit to supply "compatible" ribbons for our high speed line printers.
After a couple of pages the ribbons printed fresh air.

He did not do it twice and his limp lasted weeks.

sgoode

Thanks for comments so far. Our printers are 99% HP and I think pretty much all have the drum unit built into the toner unfortunately.