Official Poll: Why Do You Refill?

The Hat said:

Why do I Refill my printers ? Other !

Firstly if I didn’t then I wouldn’t have found this wonder crazy place or the rest of you cheapskates, geeks, and Printaholics…

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I think of us as thrifty, intellectually curious, enthusiasts ... helping the general consumer by putting a little downward pressure on OEM ink pricing.

On the result I saw it seems I was the only person to check other. I was surprised given the independent mindset of most participants on this forum.

I just hate the vendors (Think big 3 printer company's, but there are others) who try to restrict your options when using the product you purchased from them with your hard cash.

By restricting refill ink options they also try to force you into a behavior pattern to suit their commercial interests.

Just sticks in craw!

Using the same logic auto companies would be able to restrict the gas brand you can use in your vehicle, no?

Oh, I also checked option 1 on t he questionnaire. Not being independently wealthy and enjoying home printing, refilling is the only option for me.

Roy Sletcher

I have been refilling carts since I bought my HP inkjet printer when inkjet printer first came on the market. The day I stumbled onto a guy selling refill inks at a pc show made me realize how much money was to be made buying OEM new carts. Then I found this site and became a real believer. I thank all of you folks out there who support this site and am amazed at the time you spend making this site what it is.. I have turned many peope on to refilling their carts and also refill for my whole family and other friends. I am a retired mech. engineer and love to tinker with just about anything, so finding better ways for refilling is right up my ally. I am very frugal when it comes to spending my retirement income so it makes me very happy to be stickin it to these companies that try and charge more money for their carts. than the original price of the printer. In my younger days I was a photo-darkroom junky hobbyist. Nothing gave me more pleasure than to figure out ways to reuse my photo chemicals to obtain more prints then what was recomended by the greedy manufacturer whos first intial is "K". Well look at them now their huge empire is shrinking day by day. Beware printer manufacturers your day may be coming, as well as other computer companies selling their software and operating systems with continuous updates and new bigger and better versions. Well I guess its time to get off my hi-horse have a glass of my home made wine and chill out......

well, not to save money so much, but not give give them to these companies, if companies that make compatible cartridges make 5-20 million a year offering cartridges for 3-7$, and that is good for them, than, why official companies, not sell at least for 10$. I am not going to feed them.

I'm grateful for the very low prices on printers, but I was appalled by how fast I blew through the first $60 set of cartridges. It made me mad that the cost of OEM ink was many times greater than the advertising fantasy. Considering waste, I calculated that on a volume basis the ink was not that much cheaper than gold.

I'm always looking to save my money. As I tell my Wife and Daughter - we are in the cost cutting business. Also, I just enjoy being able to print my own images. I have too many images to print to continue to buy OEM cartridges. Besides, they made a bunch off of me up until the fall of 2013. That's when I saw the light, eh found out about this forum that is - haha! I just printed a 13x19 shot of a waterfall shot I took at Mt. Ranier Washington. I looked at the print and said - "I don't like the color" let me reprint. In the past, I would've done a test print on a 4x6 and not really saw it at face value, but now I don't have to be so thrifty. Now, before anyone gets nippy, I don't do that very often because I don't like wasting paper, but the point is I don't worry so much anymore about the ink cost. Also, I always seem to have one ink go out at the wrong time and then had to wait for ink in the mail because the local stores don't stock them. So, it's really, really convenient to just go to the www.tomybasementinmyshorts.com, instead of www.canon or Epson.com and then wait.

Plus, my Wife and Daughter were killing me with the ink costs for the Workforce printer. They would print 50 pages just to get one specific page. I just had to stop the bleeding and the disagreements (or light arguments-haha!).

Just One Man's Opinion

1) If we had to pay gas prices at the same price a gallon of ink costs, we would throw out the car every empty tank and purchase a new one.
2) Printer manufacturers use built in obsolesence into cartridges, forcing people to spend an outrageous price for ink. Imagine if our TV's and PC's, cars ect had this. Total anarchy would breakout.
3) Save money is the primary reason, and I do like getting into how things work or CAN work if a bit of effort is put into it.

Reading through these posts has been reinvigorating my desire to print more just so I can refill my carts!

Nifty said:

Reading through these posts has been reinvigorating my desire to print more just so I can refill my carts!

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That is funny because I suffer from that same refill disease, it’s great…

I refill because I saw that the OEM's really get stuck into us here in Australia. Friends in India and Asia just laugh at the prices we pay.
Also I like to be a FULL partner in making prints, its easy, but not cheap to purchase OEM ink. I was introduced to refilling here, and it is very satisfying to wrestle with the learning curve, make new contacts and have the odd stuff up, in the end its about getting to a performance outcome that you believe may be there at the start. In a past life I was a dedicated fisherman, that led to me building my own rods, then onto building for others and finally into leading edge Big Game fishing rod design and decorative thread art..........I had YEARS of fun with that....now its printing.

Cheers,
Nice to be back,
Andrew