Buying ink online?

[GC&S]

Anyone have experience buying printer ink on line? I have an HP and the ink is so expensive. I checked some websites but many say refurbished next to the price. How is an ink cartridge refurbished? Anyone have any pros or cons to ordering online?

 

[caribear]

I just recently ordered online from Meritline.com. The prices are great and the cartridges worked perfectly in our printer (Epson). I did buy the "refurbished" ones, but I am not sure what that really means.....they are packaged normally and look like regular cartridges.

 

[DeanDoug]

Hello!
I believe refurbished means that empty cartidges have been filled... just make sure that you are getting filled cartridges. I once ordered refills, only to get a kit where I was supposed to inject my empty cartridges with ink... it was awful and didn't work too well.
Good luck!

 

[disneygal66]

I work at Office Max and refurbished ink cartridges are ones that can be refilled - we do this in our store - but I have bought cartridges from inkforless.com for our printer and they work fine (Epson)

 

[Sue122]

I have used databazaar.com for several years and have been consistently pleased with them. I ordered original HP cartridges from them (not remanufactured), although they do sell remanufactured as well. They had the best prices on the type of cartridge I used.

They also ship all orders free and give you American Airlines points for your purchases! My orders also always arrived quickly.

 

[TBAKER215]

Ive been buying from ABC Ink for years. Prices are great I seem to clean the nozzles a bit more but it still works out to be a great deal. I have a Epson printer. I bought my son in the Air Force in Montana some for his Dell printer
at Xmas & he"s very happy with it the only thing with that is you cant check your ink level on the Dell something they have done to discourage refilling them but when it runs out he'll put another one in.

 

[RNMOM]

We got very tired of the cost of ink refills and last year decided to buy a laser jet printer.

We got the HP 1020 model and are still using the original cartridge it came with after about 15 months. We print maybe 5-10 pages per day around here between us and our sons. We decided if we wanted to print in color or photos we would outsource them and actually haven't run into any times when it was an issue.

If you do a lot of black and white printing you might consider a laser jet and only use the color printer as needed. Lots cheaper in the long run.

 

[bjscheel]

One thing to consider- I bought one on eBay about a year ago, new, not refurbished, but it was say, 0-5º outside. When I got my mail, the cartridge had spilled ink all over the inside of the foil packet. I didn't contact the seller, I figured sitting in the frigid temps all afternoon had caused it. So in the winter at least I will buy at the store!

 

[disneysteve]

We got very tired of the cost of ink refills and last year decided to buy a laser jet printer.

We got the HP 1020 model and are still using the original cartridge it came with after about 15 months. We print maybe 5-10 pages per day around here between us and our sons. We decided if we wanted to print in color or photos we would outsource them and actually haven't run into any times when it was an issue.

If you do a lot of black and white printing you might consider a laser jet and only use the color printer as needed. Lots cheaper in the long run.

Actually, even if you do color printing, you should still consider a laser printer. Color lasers have gotten pretty reasonable. I just bought a factory refurbished HP 1600 for $69.99 last week and this week it is down to $49.99 (so I'm getting a refund). A set of toner cartridges runs around $300, but as you point out, they last a long time, much longer than ink jet cartridges. Plus, laser toner doesn't dry out like ink jet ink does. And each color is a separate cartridge so you only have to replace the one that is actually out.