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The Inkjet Cartridge Dilemma

Inkjet Cartridges for Less.

I may have mentioned I am an avid grandparent. That fact leads to printing lots of photos and other assorted graphics for said grandchildren. Graphic printing is very ink intensive. I seem to run through ink like there is no tomorrow. Consequently I am always trying to find the cartridges on sale. I do not recommend nor will I use the refilling kits. As a reseller, we frequently got printers in for repair that appeared to have had small animals sacrificed in their interior. Generally speaking the problem was home refilled inkjet cartridges. Although in one instance we did find two halves of a mouse that had wondered into an Okidata 3510. So I am not a fan of home refill kits for inkjet cartridges. I had found a reseller that seemed to have the best price I could find for Epson branded inkjet cartridges. Databazzar’s prices were good and the shipping was free when over $50.00. However I had a defective cartridge and emailed their customer support to no avail. I could not even get an acknowledgment they were aware of my existence. Funny, they never had any problem running my credit card. Even if they would have just said, “sorry about that, but you have to go to Epson for that problem,” I would have been ok. Being ignored though, made me feel that if any substantial problem arose, the ignoring treatment would be even worse. Their lack of any response inspired me to look elsewhere when I needed new cartridges. It is scary to think how easy it is to drive away a paying customer.

After much web searching, some of which was on a very slow Verizon DSL account, (how did I ever survive dial up) I decided to try a cartridge re-manufacturer. There is a dirge of reviews on these folks. So one is left to gamble. I found several competitive vendors and checked them out on www.resellerratings.com I am trying supermediastore.com. They were well rated, the price was less than half of the branded cartridges and they have free shipping. I will let you know how well they do and if the ink cartridges compare favorably to the Epson name brand.

As an aside, I stumbled across this article in the Philadelphia Inquirer which talked about the problem of reseller ratings. It is good food for thought.
http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2003/04/08/reseller-ratings-hits-out-at-carpetbagging-crybabies

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