You may notice that with some manufacturer’s cartridges, our refills don’t behave the same way the originals did when you first install them.

Several manufacturers have decided the best way to keep you buying only original cartridges from them, thus insuring a steady flow of profits into their coffers, is to make your experience with after-market cartridges as unpleasant and difficult as possible. The leader in this effort is Lexmark, but the other companies aren’t far behind.

Lexmark has a series of cartridges labeled “Return Program Cartridge”. This indicates a cartridge purchased for a couple of dollars less than the non-return program version, but one which obliges you to return the cartridge to Lexmark when it is empty. To ensure you do this they disable a portion of the electronic strip on the front of the cartridge when you first install it. Any attempt to reuse that cartridge in the future will produce an error and the printer won’t accept it. The only solution to this is to purchase the “A” version of the cartridge. For example, Lexmark has a #36 cartridge (Return Program) and a #36A cartridge (non-Return Program). Same ink, same ink volume, but the #36A can be reused where the #36 cannot.

Other manufacturers have taken a less drastic but potentially just as effective approach to their loss of profits. Some, like Canon and HP, have elected to put a chip on their cartridge that resets the page counter in the printer when it’s first installed. Inkjet printers have no way to measure the actual ink level inside the cartridge. Instead, every time you install a new cartridge, a page counter inside the printer is reset to zero. It then counts pages based on an algorithm devised by the manufacturer; so much print equals a page’s worth of ink. The industry standard is 5% page coverage equals one page’s worth of ink. Click here for examples of page coverage. By disabling the printer’s ink-level indicator the manufacturers hope to discourage their customers from using anything but cartridges sold by them. We have chip resetters for the majority of chipped cartridges on the market so this ploy doesn’t work all that often.

Manufacturers will try every trick they can think of to lock their customers into buying only original cartridges. The reason is simple and obvious: the majority of their profits come from the sale of cartridges. Almost all of the manufacturers are selling their printers at or below cost, knowing that they’ll make up the loss once you start buying cartridges.

There are a few instances where the manufacturer’s “designed to fail” tactic actually works, preventing us from refilling certain cartridges. These instances are few. For the most part we have ways to get around their efforts to restrict the consumer’s choice in purchasing ink and toner cartridges.

The color mix in a small portion of HP 93 (C9361) and 75 (CB337) Tri-color Ink Cartridges is incorrect, with some color chambers being over filled and the balance under filled. Print quality is not affected, but depending upon individual use, a small number of purchasers may receive fewer pages than HP intended.

While only a small amount of cartridges was impacted, HP is offering a rebate to all customers who purchased a potentially affected cartridge in the U.S. or Canada during the relevant time period. Potentially impacted cartridges include the HP 75 and HP 93 – in both their regular and promotional versions — with the “Warranty End” date that falls between May 1, 2011 and August 31, 2011, which can be found printed on the HP print cartridge. Additionally, a small number of cartridges that shipped with Deskjet D4360 Printers and Photosmart C4500 and C4400 All-in-One Printers in this timeframe were potentially impacted.

Customers who purchased HP 75 and HP 93 cartridges meeting the criteria above can contact HP directly to obtain a 10 percent rebate off the Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) of the ink pack. Customers that received these cartridges in the printer box can contact HP to obtain a $2 rebate. To obtain the rebate or for more information on rebate options in North America, customers can visit www.hp.com/go/inkrebate. (Source – HP)

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Printer.com, the largest proprietary database of printer ink and toner prices, announced their price indices show most major manufacturers are increasing their retail pricing anywhere from 3% to 6%.

This affects not just one or two manufacturers, but appears to affect all manufacturers. As of September 2008, HP increased the list prices on all Mono and Color LaserJet Print Cartridges by 5%, as well as approximately 5-6% on Inkjet Cartridges. Lexmark and Xerox also raised their pricing on printer supplies in November 2008 with 5% across the board for Lexmark and 3% to 6% for Xerox. Brother, Canon and Oki soon followed suit.

Printer.com’s Director of U.S. Operations Bob Crum, says, “Expect the ink and toner cartridge price increases to remain until several months after the recession has been put to bed. No one likes increasing prices, but ink and toner are often very profitable revenue streams for printer manufacturers, and incremental price increases just make business sense for a lot of organizations looking to increase profit margins in tougher financial conditions.”  (Source-PRWeb)

These increases were all enacted last year, before the severity of the economy was fully appreciated. Expect to see further cost increases this year from the major manufacturers as they attempt to keep their revenues consistent with past years.

Cartridge sales are keeping some of these companies solvent. They have to continue to raise prices to keep their profit margin consistent.