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If there is any one thing that essentially all printer consumers can agree on it is that prices for ink and toner are far too expensive these days, and most would argue that something needs to be done. Whether you are buying toner cartridges made by the original equipment manufacturer (called the OEM), remanufactured toner cartridges, or generic cartridges from some unknown foreign company, you are still going to be paying far more money for a few ounces of ink than you ever would for wine or gasoline.

To be precise, the cost of a gallon of ink for any average inkjet printer, sold by the original equipment manufacturer, will run you somewhere in the vicinity of $8,000. That is almost a year of income for many Americans just to buy a single gallon of black dye. Those figures were taken a few years ago specifically from epson workforce 610 ink cartridges, but the specific company makes little difference and the pricing has generally remained at approximately the same levels for many years at this point. This pricing has led to a phenomenon unique to the printing industry: it is not at all uncommon for customers to buy a whole new printer when the original starter cartridge that came with the old printer runs dry. You read that correctly, the price of new ink cartridges is so expensive that many personal consumers will go out and buy a brand new (cheap) printer rather than spend the money to buy a new cartridge instead.

Why exactly is ink so blastedly expensive these days, and what can consumers do about it? Those are two questions that are debated over and over again on various ink blogs across the internet, all of whom tend to come to the same general conclusions. According to several news and magazine articles published several years ago–around the same time as the earlier mentioned statistic–ink and toner prices are due to a marketing model known as razor and blades marketing, often attributed to King Camp Gillette (of Gillette razors) but actually pioneered by competition in their industry. The essential gist of the model is that a company will either give away or sell one product at a greatly reduced price in order to encourage the recipients to purchase complimentary supplies for the product at a much higher rate. Printers are sold at break-even costs or even for a loss in order to make profits on ink and toner cartridges instead. However, in order for this model to work the company in question needs to hold a real or virtual monopoly over those consumable supplies. You cannot mark up your profits on an object if you need to engage in a price war with your competition.

This means that in order to sell hp ink for inkjet printers at $16 a pop (which is actually more expensive than the $8,000 HP ink mentioned above) there cannot be any, or very many, competitors willing to sell the same ink for $15 a cartridge instead. This is accomplished by developing a wide assortment of proprietary technology to make it difficult or, ideally, impossible for any other company to develop ink or toner cartridges to use in your printer. Simply design a printer that only accepts an absurdly complex cartridge, patent the cartridge design, and profit. Once the patent on your cartridge design runs out simply invent another complex design to replace it. This series of patents and security features allow the printing companies to sue any competitors who manufacture cartridges to compete with them; but it does not prevent companies from using their own old cartridges to fit in the machine. This has given birth to the recycled or remanufactured ink and toner cartridge industry that is now beginning to blossom.

Remanufactured cartridges have a number of advantages that make them an attractive option over buying OEM cartridges. Environmentally conscious consumers will be happy to know that they are preventing 3 pounds of plastic, foam and metal from ending up in a landfill by using a recycled cartridge. Budget-minded individuals are pleased by significantly reduced costs of remanufactured cartridges. And consumer activists are, of course, pleased to snub the OEMs. On the other hand there are also a number of drawbacks to using remanufactured equipment, specifically the possibility of equipment failure. The process of cleaning, repairing and recycling ink and toner cartridges is a delicate one that involves totally dismantling the cartridge to clean each piece individually before replacing worn out components, such as the drum on a toner cartridge. A company who does a shoddy or speedy job may produce potentially flawed cartridges that could fail in your printer and damage your hardware. These instances are very rare, especially now that more people are aware of the possibility, but they have been known to happen and are a consideration that you should keep in mind. Furthermore the OEM often include clauses that invalidate the warranty on printers they manufacture if you use third-party ink and toner cartridges, such as generic compatible or remanufactured cartridges. This means that if the cartridge does malfunction and your printer is damaged you are, quite simply, out of luck.

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