Ink Levels

[bigben2525]

I am opening a retail refill store in my area. I know with some cartridges when they are refilled the ink levels do not reset. Should I just not refill the actual cartridge the customer brings in and just provide and already filled cartridge or will I only have this issue with certain printers or cartridges? I am looking for suggestions hopefully from exisitng retail store owners. I noticed a few people have posted ways to avoid this problem by putting tape on certain ares of the cartridge however that is not something I want to do in a retail store.

Second question...does anyone know of an active message board like this one that is focused on retail store owners?

Thanks

Ben

 

[AlienSteve]

There are cartridge resetters, and yes it only affects certain printers. Newer Epson, Canon, and HP may require their cartridges be reset.

 

[canonfodder]

And there are some cartridges that cannot be reset, and can't be directly replaced with a refill cartridge. Check out the later model Canon printers. You need to do a LOT of research if you are going into refill at retail.

 

[Manuchau]

I have a small retail refilling business, and let me tell you, it is getting tougher. I have had to do fewer refills this year since the printer manufacturers are trying to put refillers out of business. Up until this year, there were no problems refilling HP cartidges, for example. Now, HP has changed the inner construction of their recent models so that they can not be easily refilled successfully, and thay have new stamps on them marked "intended for single use only". Canon has come out with chipped cartidges recently, and while they are easy to refill, no successful chip resetter has come out as of yet which will reset the ink levels back to full. Some Lexmark and Dells are refillable, but I don't recommend these printers to customers since they do not last, and many models will not allow you to reset the cartridge back to full. Epsons are refillable, but can lead to clogging problems if the printer is not used frequently. You will have suuccesss in refilling older models once you have the techniques down pat. I do recommend that you purchase several used printers on ebay (very cheap) so that you can test the cartridges before giving thm back to the customer. Do thos ONLY for models you refill frequently...like the HP 15 and 45, which are still my best sellers. If you want to remanufacture, there are opportunities to get many free empties. many of which are refillable and resellable, and the others can be sold.

If you have questions or just want to share information, just e-mail me....and good luck!!

 

[Tin Ho]

HP lost a law suit once for changing their cartrige orientaion of the vent hole from the top to the bottom of the cartridge. The change has no improvement nor give any beneficial functionality to consumers but only causing a huge confusion of how it can be refilled. If I remember correctly the judge ordered HP to dislose prosedures of how to refill such ink cartridges. This was several years ago. If HP makes their ink cartriges difficult or impossible to refill without any beneficial functionality added by the design change they are inviting another round of litigation again. Just gather your findings and facts about these cartridges. Wait for a group action suit to be brought up.

There are really no reasons why ink cartridges are made to be used only once. If the cartridges are stamped use only once it is clearly for only one single purpose, to rip consumers off. I believe there will be a judge who will say wait a minute, what do you mean use only once? Why exactly it can be used only once? What is exactly the benefit it gives consumers to use it only once? No way, make it refillable. Make all inkjet cartridges refillable. Wether you give warranty or not is a different matter but you can tell people use it only once. Are you suggesting use HP only once then dump HP?

The recent conspiracy scandal in illegally obtaining telephone records by HP top executives is sickening. This company has totally tossed its tradition started out by its original founders. The entire boardroom is awaiting a replacement by sharehold vote soon. The latest CEO Mark Hurd is reported to have walked away with millions of stock option profit along with severl other executives before and after the scandal broke out. There may be insider trading charges to be added to the scandal soon.

My most recent purchase of a HP printer, and the last, was 7 years ago when my kid was going to college. Never looked at any HP printer again. It is sickening to realize the company has been under a leadership by one who was a typist and has no technology background whatsoever. People in the boardroom seemed to have only one objective, to stuff their own pocket. This is probably why while Yahoo, Goole, Ebay, Apple, Cisco, Intuit, Oracle and many many others have been booming in the Silicon Valley big time but HP laid off 25000 employees.

Sorry for all the rants about HP. If you run into a HP cartridge that says use only once you know you have been ripped off.