Do You Have Real Ink?

Ink for my Canon MX310 (PG-40) comes in 13 mL cartridges at 24 bucks a pop. A little math reveals that each mL costs around 1.80, or an astounding $1,800/liter. Ink is part a higly lucractive business for the printer manufacturers called captive-product pricing. Companies like Canon, HP and Xerox make very little profit on the sale of a printer because they make such great margins on the sale of ink. Any profitable brand name lures counterfeiters and fakers. In the tradition of fake Louis Vuitton purses and cheap Rolex watches, an epidemic of fake printer ink has been spreading over the country. Unlike a fake Rolex, however, these ink cartridges' damage is not finished after you buy them. They are still prone to leaking, falling alart, exploding, smudging paper and jamming the print heads. This means a the cost of a new printer is often added to the expense of buying unusable, fake ink. These fake ink cartridges end up in our stores after being manufactured in China, the Philippines or Malaysia, places with cheap production means. They are generally distributed to midsize ink cartridge dealers who unwittingly sell them to consumers. Midsize ink distributors are used because it makes the counterfeit ink more difficult to trace, particularly when a single consumer has a problem with their ink and may need to trace it backwards through several middlemen. While this is a small but growing problem in the United States, it's far worse in Latin and South America, where some estimates figure as much as 50% of ink cartridges sold are in fact fake. The current numbers in the US are closer to 5%. Buying from a licensed third-party reseller or distributor is probably the best way to avoid this problem. They generally are selling recycled manufacturer ink cartridges that have ben refilled anyway. Because they sell at a discount over the manufacturer prices, no one is bothering to make counterfeit recycled cartridges (at least not yet, anyway). If you got brand name ink at a significant discount, you should check the packaging and ink cartridge itself for anything that looks out of the ordinary like misprinted labels or weak seams. I like 4inkjets.com for all my cheap ink cartridges needs.