Remanufactured Ink Cartridges: When the Best Price Doesn't Save You Money

A few years ago, I bought a remanufactured ink cartridge from an online supplier and it didn't work. I should have returned it, but for reasons I can't recall, I didn't. I never ordered from that company again and decided that remanufactured cartridges were unreliable. Flash forward to a couple of weeks ago when we needed ink cartridges to get ready for the convention. We made a trip to our nearest city which has an Office Max, and I saw that Office Max was selling remanufactured cartridges under their brand name. I trust Office Max because I've always had good experiences with their products, so I bought the cartridge without hesitation. We printed the items we needed for the convention without incident, and then, this weekend, my printer started acting oddly, making these god-awful clunking noises and refusing to print more than one page before locking up. At first I thought it was the PDF I was trying to print, and then I thought maybe we'd damaged the printer when we brought it to the convention. Eventually, it dawned on me that it was probably the cartridge. Last night, we exchanged the Office Max cartridge for an HP, and now my printer is happy again.

So how much did this lesson cost? The remanufactured cartridge was $5.50 less than the HP cartridge, but our nearest Office Max (or any office supply store for that matter) is twenty miles away. We would have lost money on gas alone, but we needed to go to the city anyway to buy a birthday present for my niece. Gas aside, though, my husband and I probably spent a combined three hours troubleshooting before we figured out that it was the cartridge. (Doh!) I'm sure that there are folks out there for whom remanufactured cartridges work—there must be or they wouldn't sell them—but not for me. I asked the Office Max manager if problems were common, and he reluctantly told me that they've had a number of returns and that remanufactured cartridges are always a risk. I really like Office Max and hope that the remanufactured cartridge business doesn't tarnish their brand name.