# I have discovered an odd phenomenon



## Rosemarie (Oct 28, 2020)

I have just bought a new printer because the ink is so expensive that it is cheaper to buy a new machine than buy fresh ink. I have tried the cheaper substitutes but my printer refused to accept it and wouldn't work. Apparently the manufacturers have designed their machines to only function on their own ink.


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## RiverM55 (Oct 28, 2020)

What a PITA. They just want to make sure they're gettin all your money and not sharin it. Sounds reminiscent of kindergarten.


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## hollydolly (Oct 28, 2020)

Rosemarie said:


> I have just bought a new printer because the ink is so expensive that it is cheaper to buy a new machine than buy fresh ink. I have tried the cheaper substitutes but my printer refused to accept it and wouldn't work. Apparently the manufacturers have designed their machines to only function on their own ink.


yep unfortunately that's the case... it's cheaper to buy a new printer than the ink ..... More fodder for landfill


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## bowmore (Oct 28, 2020)

I have a Brother  B&W laser printer and buy aftermarket toner with no problem. I think some of the inkjet printers get hinky with aftermarket cartridges


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## Don M. (Oct 28, 2020)

The ink cartridges that come with most new printers are only partially full, and seldom print more than 50 or 60 pages.  If you use your printer very much, and buy a new one every time the ink runs out, you will be wasting a lot of money.  I have a rather old HP inkjet, and I have been using refilled cartridges....bought on EBAY for about half the new cartridge price, and have had no problems....other than the HP software doesn't recognize the amount of ink in the cartridge....no big deal.


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## Jules (Oct 28, 2020)

If you get a decent salesperson, they’ll tell you which brands use the least ink & will accept refills.  Sometimes it’s worth it to pay more.


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## Rosemarie (Oct 29, 2020)

Thank you for your comments


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## Camper6 (Oct 29, 2020)

Rosemarie said:


> I have just bought a new printer because the ink is so expensive that it is cheaper to buy a new machine than buy fresh ink. I have tried the cheaper substitutes but my printer refused to accept it and wouldn't work. Apparently the manufacturers have designed their machines to only function on their own ink.


I haven't run into that problem yet. I refill the cartridges myself for black ink. The cheaper printers don't have full cartridges.


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## Pappy (Oct 29, 2020)

Don M. said:


> The ink cartridges that come with most new printers are only partially full, and seldom print more than 50 or 60 pages.  If you use your printer very much, and buy a new one every time the ink runs out, you will be wasting a lot of money.  I have a rather old HP inkjet, and I have been using refilled cartridges....bought on EBAY for about half the new cartridge price, and have had no problems....other than the HP software doesn't recognize the amount of ink in the cartridge....no big deal.



‘I have an old HP too, and buy from eBay. So far, they have worked good.


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## Ronni (Oct 29, 2020)

@Ruthanne I think it depends on the printer brand. I deal with printers a lot because I offer tech support for my clients.

Aftermarket or refilled printer cartridges work well at a fraction of the cost, IF your particular brand and model will accept them! More and more manufacturers are designing their printers to be proprietary, so they won’t accept anything that isn’t their brand/model ink.

And like others have mentioned, a new printer comes with ink cartridges, usually called starter cartridges, that have on average 50% less ink.


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## tbeltrans (Oct 29, 2020)

Rosemarie said:


> I have just bought a new printer because the ink is so expensive that it is cheaper to buy a new machine than buy fresh ink. I have tried the cheaper substitutes but my printer refused to accept it and wouldn't work. Apparently the manufacturers have designed their machines to only function on their own ink.



There was a lawsuit against HP about that at one time and they had to change their firmware to accept reused cartridges, so we are able to purchase such cartridges at a much lower cost and for us they work fine.  We got the firmware and I was able to apply it to our printer. I would imagine that their firmware has that change in newer printers, but don't know that from personal experience.  I don't know about other brands in this regard and am not specifically recommending HP over others, so much as recounting my experience about cartridges.

Tony


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## Nathan (Oct 29, 2020)

Printers and their ink wasting ability drives me nuts, so my strategy is:  got a monochrome printer to print documents, just black & white.   If I need color photos printed I'll farm-out that job to Walmart or Rite-Aid.


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## Tommy (Oct 29, 2020)

It strikes me as odd that your printer wouldn't accept third-party ink, Rosemarie.  What brand was the old printer?

In January 2015, I bought a Canon MX-922 "all-in-one" inkjet and had no problem using a number of different third-party manufacturers' ink cartridges in it.  I bought all of the ink through Amazon, bought only cartridges that specifically listed my model of printer, and paid about 1/5 the the price of the manufacturer's ink.

For any who might be interested, after two and a half years the print quality suddenly started to go downhill.  I looked into buying a new print head but the cost was more than the cost of a new printer so I simply replaced the printer with the same model.  I later found a video describing how to clean a clogged print head.  I thoroughly cleaned the print head on the old printer (not a really quick process, but neither was it difficult) and put that printer into storage.  I'm confident it would now work properly if I were to put it back into use.

As an experiment, I've only used the more expensive used Canon ink cartridges in the new printer and it still prints nicely.  If the print quality degrades any time soon, I'll just clean the print head and go back to using the cheap ink.  If it fails for any other reason, I still have the old one in storage to fall back on.


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## Devi (Oct 29, 2020)

We have inexpensive Canon all-in-one printers. We recently needed to get black ink -- I wanted to get four cartridges -- but couldn't seem to find the cartridges anywhere. I finally looked into getting new printers, but the cost of better ones was prohibitive, and I wasn't convinced from reviews that they were any better than what we have.

Finally I found the "big" cartridges at Walmart.com -- but when I tried to buy four, the website wouldn't let me. I finally (get this) found that I had to order them *one at a time!*  That is, I had to place four orders. With shipping costs as well. At any rate, I bought them and have them stashed away.

Just something to know.


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## Rosemarie (Oct 29, 2020)

Tommy said:


> It strikes me as odd that your printer wouldn't accept third-party ink, Rosemarie.  What brand was the old printer?
> 
> In January 2015, I bought a Canon MX-922 "all-in-one" inkjet and had no problem using a number of different third-party manufacturers' ink cartridges in it.  I bought all of the ink through Amazon, bought only cartridges that specifically listed my model of printer, and paid about 1/5 the the price of the manufacturer's ink.
> 
> ...


My old printer was a Canon...the one I've just bought is hp. The ink cartridges are half the price of Canon, and only slightly smaller. So far so good...it printed out my new knitting pattern nicely!


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## Ronni (Oct 29, 2020)

Rosemarie said:


> My old printer was a Canon...the one I've just bought is hp. The ink cartridges are half the price of Canon, and only slightly smaller. So far so good...it printed out my new knitting pattern nicely!


I’ve used most of the mainstream brand printers over the last few years AS I’vehelped clients, or used family members’ or purchased my own.  My preference hands down is HP. printer and ink are generally less expensive then the other brands, more readily available in more big box stores, online and Amazon, and their machines generally are more user friendly and intuitive than their competitors.
Glad you got yourself one @Rosemarie!


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## ManjaroKDE (Oct 29, 2020)

Being retired leaving all the printer headaches behind I also found that you can save money buying a 'throwaway printer'.  I have very, very little to print anyway, my toner dries up faster than I can use it.  With the 'cloud', cheap mass storage and most gov agencies accepting electronic data I find it's easier than junk taking up space on my desk.


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## officerripley (Oct 29, 2020)

Be careful when buying any kind of ink cartridge: If you buy too many at once, they can dry out (even if stored in a cool dry place and in ziplock bags).


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## bowmore (Oct 29, 2020)

I have an Epson color inkjet printer.  The reason is it has separate cartridges for each color. I also have a Brother laser B & W printer, which is all I use. Like Nathan said, it is easier to go to CVS  to print out in color.
One of the basic problems with the inkjet is, if you do not use it a lot, it takes half an ink cartridge to clean the heads. 
As far as replacements go, I order on line from 101 inks. The quality is good, and the prices reasonable.


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## Butterfly (Nov 2, 2020)

Nathan said:


> Printers and their ink wasting ability drives me nuts, so my strategy is:  got a monochrome printer to print documents, just black & white.   If I need color photos printed I'll farm-out that job to Walmart or Rite-Aid.



Me, too.  I've got a Brother laser printer that suits me just fine.  The laser cartridges aren't exactly cheap, but they last a very long time for me.


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## FastTrax (Nov 16, 2020)

Since everything that's marketed today has planned obsolescence then one has to compensate one way or another.

1. Call customer service and tell them how outraged you are about whatever it is you bought from them that almost bankrupted you and even though you have purchased dozens if not hundreds of whatever it is you bought with complete and total satisfaction but this purchase was the worst experience in your life. You don't want your money back because you are on a critical time constraint and would appreciate a replacement immediately. No matter how hard they try to stay on script just keep bawling and threaten to kick your verbal complaint with a follow up written complaint upstairs to corporate, by now they will be completely off script and capitulate. This usually is a one shot deal per product and model.

2. In store purchases are really easy just as long as you deal with either the store manager or one salesperson and one salesperson only. Even if another salesperson approaches you ask to see the manager or that other particular salesperson only. Let them know from the very beginning that you are there because their competition was not only rude but they never had sales of anything that should be affordable. Do that enough times and they will start giving optional trinkets for the product. Discount programs,  store coupons and promo codes shave the cost of the taxes also.

3. If there is a particular new product you like but can't afford it then apply to the manufactures beta test program which if you are selected and tout their product as the savior of modern man they will let you keep that particular model. However this requires you to have vast knowledge of whatever it is you're shilling their product for. Newbies need not apply.

4. As for printer ink if you want to save on color ink whether you have a dual ink cartridge setup or 5 ink cartridge setup you can go in the printers menu system and select the monochrome setting which will use the black ink cartridge only. Most printers I use are not compatible with not only other brands but not even other models of that particular brand. I use HP printers exclusively as my workhorses and 1 or 2 Epson printers for my SDR spectrum analysis screenshots.


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## fancicoffee13 (Nov 16, 2020)

Rosemarie said:


> I have just bought a new printer because the ink is so expensive that it is cheaper to buy a new machine than buy fresh ink. I have tried the cheaper substitutes but my printer refused to accept it and wouldn't work. Apparently the manufacturers have designed their machines to only function on their own ink.


I bought a cheap scanner/printer a long time ago, and it runs on the old wal mart ink any time.


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