Often while talking to customers or responding to readers I am in a dilemma whether to suggest a refill or a new printer cartridge. Well, this week I will list the options and tell you how to go refill safely. But please note, these are my comments and parts of this article have been sourced from leading manufacturers of printers.

Life was simple in the days of the dot-matrix printer. The dots were printed like a typewriter using a similar ribbon. You could go to any third-party manufacturer and they would change the ribbon inside your cartridge for a tenth of the cost of a new one. Then came along laser and inkjet printers which sucked the ink out, along with a lot of money from our wallets. This was when the trouble started.

Most of us have some time or the other fallen prey to refilling gangs who charge anywhere between Rs 50 and Rs 800, depending on the cartridge, but leave us with spoilt printers that no one would repair. Service centres would tell you your printer was dead because you used refilled cartridges and that the repair could not be covered under warranty.

As my friend and business acquaintance who runs a chain of cartridge refill and remanufacturing franchises across the country advises, the chemistry of inks is very different. The same ink can’t work for 600 dpi and 1200 dpi printers. Similarly, between two models of colour laser printers from the same manufacturer, the inks would differ. But the refill guys just use the same set of inks—a concoction of chemical, colour, and water—to fill your cartridges. These would eventually leak and kill the printer.

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