One in four refilled print cartridges DOA
sep.2007 –  Print cartridge maker HP has advised consumers to beware of buying well-known grocery giants’ in-store/refill brand and various refill stations’ inkjet cartridges, warning that one in five compatible alternatives were either “dead on arrival” or failed prematurely.Across Europe it is becoming a popular phenomenon for high street grocery chains to enter the consumer electronics market and many are selling their-own branded inkjet cartridges compatible with popular printer brands such as HP.

HP business development manager Eduardo Macias told siliconrepublic.com that original print cartridges from manufacturers like HP would on average print 34pc more pages than compatible alternatives and 69pc more pages than those bought at a refill outlet.“I don’t think people fully realise that when they buy another brand of cartridge for a HP printer they think it’s a bona fide HP cartridge when in fact its simply a refilled cartridge.“As a result the probability of such a cartridge actually working is quite low. When the consumer thinks he or she is saving a few quid they’re not actually saving in the end.“The problem for HP is they won’t blame the firm that sold them the cartridge but would actually blame the manufacturer of the printer itself.”Gary Tierney, general manager of HP’s Inkjet Products Group in Ireland told siliconrepublic.com: “We don’t make cartridges for anyone else to brand. But if someone sees a store-branded product the fact of the matter is it is second-hand, possibly even more than second hand.“Retail chains, including traditional food retailers, now see a route to market through electronics like 42-inch plasma TVs and laptops. But the problem we find is that if they buy a print cartridge with someone else’s brand on it there’s a perception that these products are made by HP and they’re not.“It is important to note that the print head on each cartridge is not a small bottle top but a detailed piece of electronics. And in most cases of these store-branded ‘compatible’ products they are actually something that somebody else threw in a bin,” Tierney said.

HP study says remanufactured printer cartridges unreliable
November  2006Beware remanufactured printer cartridges, says Hewlett-Packard’s Scott Canonico, manager of environmental policy and strategy at the Silicon Valley company. Their failure rates can negate short-term savings from their lower price.Canonico says an HP-sponsored study by Moorpark, Calif.-based QualityLogic, a quality testing service company, concluded that remanufactured cartridges have major reliability problems,Results from the study say that 70% of remanufactured inkjet cartridges and 80% of remanufactured laserjet “exhibited reliability problems,” in contrast with 2% of original HP cartridges. The study defines a reliability problem as “leaking cartridges, cross-contaminated colors, and cartridges that printed no pages.” In addition, the study says that approximately 17% of all refilled inkjet cartridges failed prematurely, but did not cite the failure percentage for original HP cartridges.Major ink and toner manufacturers, including HP, Canon, Epson, and Lexmark, have cartridge recycling programs for their laserjet cartridges at the very least, if not for their inkjets as well. Users can request a postage-paid envelope online and return the cartridge to the manufacturer, or in many cases, use a similar process to return many cartridges at once in bulk. In some cases, the cartridges are recycled completely, while others are remanufactured for reuse. HP does not remanufacture cartridges sent in by customers. Instead, it recycles the raw materials to make other products, Canonico says, such as clothes hangers, automobile parts, processing trays, and even parts for other electronics such as scanners. Printer cartridges “are designed for single use, where we’ve optimized the product to work for that original life, and there’s a huge amount of technology that goes into the product itself,” says Canonico. “It’s a tuned system, and when you introduce a third party ink into an inkjet cartridge, you’re not going to get the same level of performance.” What ends up happening to compensate for an under-performing cartridge is a great deal of waste in the form of reprints, which use unnecessary paper and energy as well as ink or toner.Canonico says the material that HP uses for its laserjet and inkjet cartridge packaging is made out of recycled paperboard, and newer cartridges use fewer overall materials, making them easier to recycle. “We’ve reduced the size of laserjet packaging through some design innovations, and also used more recyclable material,” he says. “We have about 30% greater space use efficiencies for laserjet cartridges, which means 30% more cartridges per pallet, 1500 more cartridges in an ocean container, and less truck traffic—a big one for the environment.”