Both laser printers and their less expensive ink jet printer cousins can print your documents with an amazing amount of speed and color, but buying ‘name brand’ printer cartridges can break your budget. Unlike a few years ago, compatible toner cartridges have become a viable alternative; not only saving your ink budget, but allowing you to do so without sacrificing the life of your printer or the quality of the printed pages.
With that in mind, let’s answer 6 common questions we get here at Exec all the time about printers, toner, and ink cartridges:
1. Do I have to buy the manufacturer’s brand toner or ink cartridges?
Printer cartridge manufacturers like HP, Canon, Lexmark etc spend a lot of marketing money convincing us that you do have use their brand. They have even resorted to scare tactics like spreading the myth that using compatible toners will void your printer’s warranty. You have every right to use compatible toner and ink in your printers.
2. What does compatible mean?
A compatible toner cartridge, or ink cartridge, is a cartridge that is made out of all brand new parts, none of which have ever been used; so it is a brand new cartridge, made just for you; it’s just not made by the ‘name’ brand manufacturer’s like I mentioned above. (HP, etc.)
3. So then what does remanufactured mean?
Remanufactured toner and inkjet cartridges are made from not all new parts. If you have ever returned empties or sold them back to where you bought them, they are collecting them to either reuse them or reuse the parts. While the quality of remanufactured toner cartridges is better than it used to be, and extensive quality testing is usually in place, these are the cheapest variety of cartridges for a reason. In a laser printer, 98% of the moving parts of your printer are in the toner cartridge, and like in ink jet printers, a great deal of heat is used to produce your printed page. The components of these cartridges were not meant to be reused over and over in this manner.
4. Are compatible and remanufactured toner and ink cartridges made for all printers?
The short answer is ‘most likely’. Cartridges are made for most models of HP, Lexmark, Samsung, Kodak, Brother, Epson, Canon, Compaq, and Dell printers.
5. Won’t compatible or remanufactured cartridges hurt my printer?
If one of these cartridges were to dump toner into your printer, you would probably need to have your machine professionally cleaned, but that is true of name brand cartridges as well. And a reputable supplier will pay for this service should a cartridge they send you do this to your printer. In 20 years in this industry, I have never heard one story about a toner of any variety rendering a printer useless.
6. How do I find a reputable supplier of toner and ink cartridges?
Do a little homework, and make sure the supplier you choose to buy from will stand behind their cartridges. You should also find a supplier that will pay for your printer repair should the need arise, and a supplier that has a favorable return policy. Everyone likes to save money on their toner and ink cartridges, but buying the absolute cheapest ones you can find online is not necessarily the best route. And if you are buying online, watch the shipping charges. That is a game some of the lowest cost suppliers like to play – showing you extremely low toner prices then gouging you on shipping.
And if you are looking for a dependable supplier that provides a high quality cartridge at a good price, with state of the art nationwide distribution, that does not play any games with prices, and operates on a highly customer friendly level, well…Exec Business Products fits that bill. Please let us know if there is anything we can do for you.
