HP ripping us off?

[Dectek]

We have two HP printers in our home and we go through a lot of ink. Every month or so we change the Black cartridges and 6 to 8 weeks on the color ones. I have always gotten the larger 40ml black cartridges for the economy factor.
Yesterday I figured I would try one of those self refill kits. I found that my 40ml cartridge will not hold more than 22ml. During this refill process you clean out the cartridge so you can see that it is empty. When the makers of the refill kit say put 20 ml back in...they mean it.
This means that Hewlett Packard is ripping the users of these ink cartridges off.
LAWMAN....can ya help me out....the way I see it ...HP owes me a 5 gallon pail of black ink. Wonder if I could squeeze a few cartridges out of them if the words class action come up.

 

[jonnythan]

Actually, you are getting ripped off.

For black&white printing, inkjets have a far higher cost per page than a laser - and generally lower quality, too.

As for the 40 mL... maybe that's the volume of the entire cartridge. HP isn't known as the most honest company when it comes to printers and ink... I remember an incident recently where the included ink cartridges are "economy" cartridges that are only half full.

As for the refill kits... I never bothered. They're messy and the ink is almost always noticably lower quality.

If you're really concerned about ink costs, head to ebay and pick up a used laser printer. If it's a laserjet, make sure it has the new roller kit to fix paper feed problems. I just got one a couple weeks ago for $65 delivered - less than the cost of two ink cartridges, and it included a toner cartridge that's good for 3000 pages on average.

Edit:

I want to add that HP isn't really ripping you off. HP spends an extraordiary amount of money on research of papers, inks, etc.

 

[Former FLL Now MSP Diver]

...where Gillette has always maintained "give away the razors and sell them the blades", ink is where printer manufacturers make their real money. You can now get printers under $100, but refills cost $30+. I've tried refilling, but as noted the quality doesn't seem to cut it.

What really galls me is when you run out of one color in a three color cartridge. A waste when you pitch it with with 2 out of 3 colors still full. My next printer purchase will be a Canon as they now sell the color tanks separately so you replace only what color is empty.

Marc

 

[landlocked]

Just a couple items of note. Originally, ink cartridges had a problem with the heads getting jamed up with dried ink. HP solved this by making the print head part of the cartridge. So, when you buy a new cartridge you also get a new print head. (Other manufactures have come up with different solutions.) The upshot is, that if you refill you will eventually come up against a plugged up print head. I would recommend, that if you chose to refill, that you limit yourself to one refill per cartridge.

Another point. Laserjets are repairable. You can buy parts and fix them when they break. Inkjets, as a rule, are disposable. There are very few parts available. Basically, you throw them out and get another one when they break.

Last point. HP also sells printers that use three seperate color cartridges. If fact, they have just come out with a line of printers that uses five separate cartridges (two of the cartridges use half tones.)