Chipped ink cartridges

jimgardner

Can anyone explain to me how it is that printer manufacturers are allowed to chip their ink cartridges so that you have to use their own?? I have a HP printer and have tried several alternatives (remanufactured, refurbished, 100% compatible etc etc) and none of which work. My printer rejects anything but HP original cartridges. I'm no legal expert but why isn't this against competition law?? Surely being forced to buy HP cartridges and not have the choice to use other 'compatible' makes which are significantly cheaper is totally against consumer choice and should be stopped!

jimgardner

My printer is a HP PSC950 and it uses HP 15 (Black) and HP 78 (Colour) cartridges. Every 'compatible' I've tried in the past gives me an error eg "Incorrect colour cartridge", "Insert Cartridge". I've tried (a) just pressing Enter to try to clear the error, (b) re-booting the printer, (c) re-installing the cartridge but nothing works! In the end I have to get a refund from the company and then buy original cartridges. Every time my printer runs out of ink I look around on the Internet and because of the ridiculous price HP charge I try compatibles again but in the past 3 years or so I have never found compatible cartridges that work! I posted this message because it got me thinking about competition law and I wondered why it was that this practice ie chipping cartridges is allowed to carry on.

Farway

There was an investigation by the EU about this, you may wish to read this, and follow links at bottom of the page

Prices of printer cartridges look set to drop thanks to a new EU law that will ban printer firms from forcing consumers to buy their own-brand refills.

What you do about it I am not sure, Are you member of Which? Do you have pots of money to go to European court?

rmg1

Useful to know.
Shame about the typo near the end.

jimgardner

Interesting article which I note is several years old! In particular it states "By 2006 the use of chips to prevent or restrict refills are strictly forbidden under European law" So what happened because as far as I'm aware the practice continues!

gonzo127

jimgardner wrote: »

Interesting article which I note is several years old! In particular it states "By 2006 the use of chips to prevent or restrict refills are strictly forbidden under European law" So what happened because as far as I'm aware the practice continues!

you will probably find that printers produced since 2006/7 can now use non chipped cartridges however you lose the extra functionality of knowing how much ink you have left, i recently got a newish printer a year or so ago and have been using compatables in that no problem so its possible that you got one of the last printers which had the chip restriction

might it be cheaper to get a new printer?

wookie66

I own a reliable ten year old HP 950C printer and always buy my cartridges from ebay

There are lots of reliable trustworthy sellers who have original HP cartridges at less than half RRP and therefore offer excellent value for money.

Dont worry too much about the use by date either. I have used cartridges that have been 3 or more years out of date but work fine.

Why use remanufactured when you can buy the originals for same price

calisto

I can only guess the reason the carts don't work is because your printer driver "knows" that it is a 3rd party cart. Try finding an earlier printer driver.

Or, if this EU thing is in force, try upgrading the printer driver to the latest which must comply with the law.

Ink_Guru

Intresting feed, same thing has recently happened with the Lexmark 100 inks although they have now have software upgrades in the printer to prevent the use of compats in the new Lexmarks. There are some good HP inks out there pricewise but it's a shame the big producers like HP try and prevent people from having compatibles. Agree with an earlier post try uninstalling your printer and re-installing with a older driver. hope this works.

jonmp

I managed to refill my HP cartridges a few times but now it won't let me print unless I buy new ones. Looks like at least £20 to replace them and the stuff about 250 pages is nonsense, more like 25 pages. It would be cheaper to have a medieval monk doing it by hand if one was available! What's more the software to control the printer has not been updated to work with Windows 7 as it did with XP so if there is a way of circumventing the problem I can't access the menus to do it.

I don't have the time to faf about trying to use older drivers etc. What I might do is sell the HP printer on ebay and buy one that lets me put the ink I want into it. Anyone know if such a machine exists?

My recommendation? Don't buy HP.

roddydogs

jonmp wrote: »

I managed to refill my HP cartridges a few times but now it won't let me print unless I buy new ones. Looks like at least £20 to replace them and the stuff about 250 pages is nonsense, more like 25 pages. It would be cheaper to have a medieval monk doing it by hand if one was available! What's more the software to control the printer has not been updated to work with Windows 7 as it did with XP so if there is a way of circumventing the problem I can't access the menus to do it.

I don't have the time to faf about trying to use older drivers etc. What I might do is sell the HP printer on ebay and buy one that lets me put the ink I want into it. Anyone know if such a machine exists?

My recommendation? Don't buy HP.

Yup, but Canon are just as bad even the larger CL 41s dont last 5 mins, & if you dont uses them within a fairly short time they dry out anyway.