Wednesday, February 29, 2012

The Cheap Ink Cartridge Blog

I noticed in my alerts today that there is a new blog on the scene, The Cheap Ink Cartridge Blog, which purports to be the official blog of a new ecommerce site called the Cheap Ink Cartridge Store, which is under construction.

I guess you can never have enough websites and blogs about saving money on ink cartridges and printer ink refills bought online.

We've been writing about printer ink for almost 4 year now, and we've seen a lot of websites come and go. Let's see if this one sticks around.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Can Ink Cartridge Refills be Too Cheap?

While replacement ink cartridges tend to be fairly expensive, a lot of people prefer to save money by have the old cartridges refilled or getting a do it yourself home ink refill kit. The desire to save money on ink is understandable, especially if you do a lot of printing. But: Can cheap ink be too cheap?

That is a question explored by Jeff Bertolucci of PC World in his article, where he concludes that Cheap Jumbo Ink Refills are Too Messy to Recommend. He ordered a "jumbo" ink refill kit on Amazon ( 20 ounces!), which he saw available from multiple online sellers. The kit is supposed to be for universal use.

Bertolucci, who refers to himself as "PC World's Refiller"- so he oughta know, found that 2 different jumbo refill kids were too messy, and the cheapest of the ink may not be worth using. He got better results in the past from remanufactured inks and the Costco ink refill service.

In my personal opinion, I'd rather not MESS with the DIY ink refills at all. There are plenty of online vendors of cheap ink cartridges, and you can often find high quality OEM or generic replacement cartridges at a very low price. With all the online price competition in regular ink cartridges, there isn't much of a need to even consider the refill alternatives, especially when it comes to color ink.

Sunday, November 30, 2008

Black Friday and Christmas Color Ink Sales

A lot of online ink retailers are running special sales during this Holiday shopping season. Some were Black Friday one day specials while others extendde to Cyber monday or multiple days of the season.

For example Ink Grabber, which offers cheap printer ink cartridges, is running a Black Friday through Cyber Monday special with free shipping and an extra $5 off deal.

Other retailers like Best Buy and Amazon are running a lot of special deals. I'm sure it's a good time to find some deals on color ink.

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Strategies for Saving Money on Personal Printing Needs



I started this blog because I do a lot of printing at home and run through a lot of ink. I have also run through a lot of printers. As I sit here I have 2 broken Lexmark All in one inkjet printers with left over ink cartridges ( I bought multiple packs for the savings). I guess the printheads just went bad or something. I am not sure. With the cheap cost of printers it's not worth trying to fix.

Inkjet printers are cheap, but they get you with the cartridge replacements. I also have 2 HP Photomsmart printers. I picked these up at Office Max with an online coupon special. Shipped they came to under 80 bucks each, But of course when I needed to replace the cartridges, it was over $60. I am pretty happy with the printers. I print out a lot of photos and enjoy the convenience. A lot of people suggest to just do the printouts in the stores that offer it. Well, I have donethis and seen the printers. For one thing a lot of these places use printers that really aren't THAT great. And sometimes the photos aren't the best. In a way if I wanted to do that I would just use a film camera and get it developed at a real photo lab. I like using digital for the DIY at home factor.

Another solution worth considering is laser printers. One probably with this is I use a lot of color ink. The cost of color laser printers is much higher and probably not meant for what I want to do. I might buy a b/w laser printer just for printing shipping labels and things that are black and white and stick with my HP photo printer for pics. I will explore getting deals through multipacks, special store coupons and savings, eBay, and/or "refill" services.