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HP Colour Ink Cartridge exorbitant prices

chas0001

chas0001

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 18, 2006
804
0
Alicante, SPAIN
Just went out to get a new tri colour ink cartridge for my mothers printer (HP PSC 2350). I was absolutely shocked to find it for sale in Carrefour, Spain for €49.90 :eek: That is for one cartridge! How on earth can they justify a price like that?
 
While HP inks are generally expensive, 50 euro...is like 85 aussie dollars. Very very naughty HP! While the printers don't take proprietary cartridges, their inks have the HP code on them so that printer knows it and gives you a nice message.

I think when I bought a resupply it was about $45 australian. Another HP printer I have uses the individual inks (6 indv. inks) and they were about $20 each iirc. There was a promotion that day though, buy a printer get inks for 1/2 price. So I bought like $250 of ink ($125 sale).
 
Yeah, HP charges an arm and a leg for those cartridges. To this day I can't figure out a legit reason why. I really wish that you could use other brands.

I realy try to conserve on printing. That is really all you can do.
 
Carrefour, especially here in Spain, are well known for overpricing some of the things they sell. When I purchased a TV last year the exact same model was €450 more expensive in Carrefour than the one I got from www.redcoon.es.

Just trying to search elsewhere to get the cartridge. I am not even that fussed at getting an HP one now. Inkrite have compatible cartridges but I don't know how good they are.
 
I have never figured out this pricing strategy, either. About a year ago, my mother called me from an office supply store. She had gone in looking for a replacement cartridge for her HP printer. She couldn't believe the prices on them. In fact, it was cheaper to buy a new printer than to buy a replacement cartridge. Way to make sure landfills get cluttered with old printers, guys.
 
steve2112 said:
I have never figured out this pricing strategy, either. About a year ago, my mother called me from an office supply store. She had gone in looking for a replacement cartridge for her HP printer. She couldn't believe the prices on them. In fact, it was cheaper to buy a new printer than to buy a replacement cartridge. Way to make sure landfills get cluttered with old printers, guys.
Click to expand...

I suppose they sell the printers quite cheaply so that they can screw us with expensive replacement ink cartridges. Obviously, taking note to point out on the documentation that any cartridge other than theirs will damage the printer.

Has anybody had any experience with Remanufactured Ink Cartridges. There are loads on ebay for sale. My only worry would be compatibility with the printer.
 
chas0001 said:
I suppose they sell the printers quite cheaply so that they can screw us with expensive replacement ink cartridges. Obviously, taking note to point out on the documentation that any cartridge other than theirs will damage the printer.

Has anybody had any experience with Remanufactured Ink Cartridges. There are loads on ebay for sale. My only worry would be compatibility with the printer.
Click to expand...

I normally use refurbished toner cartridges in my HP Laserjet printer. they have the same yield as the original ones, and cost barely half price.
Don't have any experience with ink jet, though. The only time I bought one was in Italy, for my father-in-law HP Photo something printer. They costed less, but they were not delivering very good prints at least for pictures.
 
Whilst the prices do seem ridiculous, one has to bear in mind that about 70 percent of the technology (and therefore cost) that makes the prints lies within the cartridge, i.e. the ink and the head. The printer by contrast is really just a transport device, comparatively low-tech.
HP were always different than Epson in this respect in that they included the head in the cartridge whereas Epson separated them. It does guarantee that you get great prints no matter how old the printer.
I'm not an HP apologist but there is a reason.
I've used refurbs/compatibles and they don't pass my quality threshold, for photo prints at least. If you're only doing docs then maybe.
 
Remanufactured cartridges

I use remanufactured cartridges for the simpler printers that use dye based ink, HP Business Inkjets 1100 and 1200. I would not use remanufactured cartridges for our pigment based ink photo-printers Photosmart Pro B9180, Canon Pixma Pro 9500 and Epson Stylus Pro 3800. The business inkjets cost less to buy a refurbished unit than a set of cartridges. As the refurbished units often come with a new set of cartridges, it would actually be cheaper to throw away the printer each time they are all empty but that is not very responsible and the carts never all empty at the same time. As they are only used for plain paper printing, the quality is not critical. On the photo-printers the quality is critical as this is sold output. Also these are expensive printers (up to £1200 each for the Epson) and we need to keep them reliable, so it is always expensive original ink.

Wilson
 
Thanks for all the feedback!

My mother never prints photos, just letters, emails, faxes etc. I realise that the print quality possibly will suffer slightly with the remanufactured cartridges but I really cannot justify the cost of new HP ones. With the risk of being called a cheapskate I think I will give remanufactured a go and see what happens. I am certain my mother will not notice the difference.
 
I solved this whole problem by switching to laser printers. I have an HP 1320 B&W and an HP 2650 Color Laserjet. The upfront costs were a bit more, but the cost per page is way lower. I also got lucky with them. I bought the 1320 on eBay cheap because they thought it was broken. It turned out only the USB port was bad. The parallel port still works fine. I got the 2550 as a display at Office Depot for about 1/2 the price. My only problem is I don't have a photo printer. The color laserjet doesn't print photos very well.
 
I think wilsonlaidlaw is, true to name, the authority here. Echoing much of what has been said here:

- when I fell in love with Photoshop and beautiful A3/A2(more rarely admittedly) prints, I knew an Epson Colorjet was the only printer that would have satisfied me; BUT

- as you say OP, you (or your mother) do not have a specialisation in photo printing and don't really use that function; SO

- I have come to see that for black and white printing laserjets win HANDS DOWN on efficiency, speed, and cost (not to mention the warmth of the paper coming off the press - fine, that was a saccharine thing to write).

After taking advice on these pages I bought an HP Laserjet 4050TN, which is plugged in to the wireless router ('T' stands for extra tray, and 'N'= network card, I believe), and now the whole family print from all over the house via the wireless network and it gives my grandmother a start every time she's alone with the printer and it gets fired up.

This is after years of wasting money and TIME on useless inkjets.

Go laser.
 
For B&W: Laser has the cheapest price per page cost, hands down.
For rare color prints: Ink Jet
For cheaper photos: Outsource to third party.
 
chas0001 said:
I suppose they sell the printers quite cheaply so that they can screw us with expensive replacement ink cartridges.
Click to expand...

This is exactly what happens. HP and other printer manufacturers sell the printers as cheaply as possible and make up the difference on the sale of ink.
 
ucfgrad93 said:
This is exactly what happens. HP and other printer manufacturers sell the printers as cheaply as possible and make up the difference on the sale of ink.
Click to expand...

Happens with razor handles/blade, and in the U.S. cell phones/service contracts.
 
I want to share you some good tool to lower down your printing cost to only less than 10% of what you are paying now :)

It's called continuous Ink system. (CIS)

I received my CIS for the Epson printer from InkRepublic and couldn't be happier! I re-printed some pictures from earlier and found the photos to be of superior quality to my original prints! Almost Indentical!!!

So far I have printed hundreds of 4x6 and 8x10 prints and many many 13x19 prints plus many pages of text. with a minimal reduction of ink. I'm using my printer a lot more, getting SUPER results, and saving money. The chips work very well to reset ink levels!

http://www.InkRepublic.com

An alternative solution is the refillable cartridge system, I would suggest you try http://www.ufosystem.net


Joao
 
RickySmith said:
I think the price of HP ssc is around 26$.The price which you mentioned here is really costly.
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What is worse is that I saw somebody buy one :eek:

I managed to get remanufactured refill's on ebay. Ok, its not ideal but the printer is only used to print letters, some with colour.
 
With the HP printers and their cartridges that include the head in the ink cartridges.

All you lose with a dud refill/re-manufacture is the cost of driving back to get it swapped for another one -- since quite a few places may offer warranties/refunds on their work or generic/store brand cartridges.

If the printer cartridge is ink only, I'd be a little more worried about the source of the ink. Since head damage means replacing the printer. Unlike quite a few HPs which only require a new cartidge.

---

If your mother is only printing out letters, getting a cheap Samsung/Brother laser printer may be worth it -- with the cheap laser cartridge getting 1-1.5k/pages per cartridge.

And saving the color printer for when you really want to pay a lot of money for a single print.

Of course these days it is getting harder to find a B&W laser or fax machine on the shelf since they are positioning cheap color lasers to be their next cash machines.
 
Try compatible ones. Many companies do HP ones. Or try your local supermarket may have them cheaper. The following websites also have them for quite cheap:

7DayShop
Lyreco
ABS Print

These are the ones I use for work.

AnDy
 
joaoferro99 said:
I want to share you some good tool to lower down your printing cost to only less than 10% of what you are paying now :)

It's called continuous Ink system. (CIS)

I received my CIS for the Epson printer from InkRepublic and couldn't be happier! I re-printed some pictures from earlier and found the photos to be of superior quality to my original prints! Almost Indentical!!!

So far I have printed hundreds of 4x6 and 8x10 prints and many many 13x19 prints plus many pages of text. with a minimal reduction of ink. I'm using my printer a lot more, getting SUPER results, and saving money. The chips work very well to reset ink levels!

http://www.InkRepublic.com

An alternative solution is the refillable cartridge system, I would suggest you try http://www.ufosystem.net
Click to expand...

I too use a cis system, my first epson lasted 3 years and would have lasted longer if had kept the heads cleaner. I have just bought another, this one is an epson 285 and with the printer, full cis system and ink refills came out at 99 pounds from ebay.

as long as you print a full color page every day it will be fine and the heads will not clog.

You can print pictures with this setup but you will find the blacks suffer reticulation and may turn a deep black/green after days maybe even hours of being exposed to light. We use this machine for printing dvd covers etc and the cost per print is way low.

For our regular office bw we use a laser and I refill the toner cartridge myself, very cheap to run.

Roy
 
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