Printer ink is a strange industry. Obviously there needs to be stringent quality control based on the type of inks that can be used in a variety of different printing applications, but does that justify an often exorbitant fee? Many consumers would say no. So, what exactly are people paying for when they invest in printer ink? Canon inks are of a very high quality and are always destined to give you a superlative quality when printing, however, how many times have consumers thought about the waste of the Canon printer ink cartridges that are thrown away? Surely they can simply be refilled – either by the printer company or by the consumer themselves? Unfortunately, such convenient, money saving techniques are rarely available in this industry. While other technologies move on, try to be greener, try to create more convenience for the consumer, the printer industry stands still and even implements retrograde technologies that hinder the consumer, almost punishing them.
This isn’t to say that Canon printer cartridges necessarily embody such technologies, but through the wider industry, there are companies who have installed chips within cartridges to effectively force them to become defunct once the ink has reached a certain level. This not only damages the environment and costs everybody money, but it is offensive to the intelligence of the consumer. There is an increasing number of printer owners realising that investing in branded ink represents a particularly bad use of their resources and is effectively funding an industry that refuses to change and is punishing the consumer for it. What this ultimately means is that 3rd party cartridge manufacturers seem like a better and better deal all of the time, especially when the inks they use are of a similarly high quality to the branded alternatives.