I just learned this one yesterday. Wish I had learned it long ago, as it would have saved me a lot of aggravation. I am assuming this is true for a lot of printers, so I am passing it on.
Being home schoolers, we use a lot of ink and paper. To save, I have Walgreen's refill my ink cartridges (for an HP 2210) when they run their specials of refills for $5, or I buy the used/refurbished ones at Office Depot or Walmart. Usually they work, sometimes they don't. Sometimes I will have one that I have used several times, and it will suddenly just stop for no reason.
This happened again this week. My nearest Walgreen or Office Depot is 30 minutes away, so its a real pain to go buy one and bring it home only to find it won't work. And, the two I got wouldn't work. I called HP to see if there was a work around as I didn't want to drive all the way back again. I mean we are talking 100 miles for 2 trips.
I was told to look at my cartridge for a date. There is evidently a microchip in the ink cartridge that tells the printer when that date has arrived. When that date gets here, it is considered to be an expired cartridge and will no longer work. The two ink cartridges I bought were indeed expired (sold to me by Office Depot in October and one had expired in April of 2007). That also explains why ones I have refilled over and over suddenly stop, the date came up.
So, I will no longer refill them close to or past the expiration date, and I will open the box and check the expiration date of refurbished ones at the cash register before I drive all the way back home.
I thought this was worth passing on!
Source: HP customer service rep
By mom-from-missouri from NW Missouri
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I wonder now about this, since I did bring one newer cartridge, and two that were nearly 4 years old, and I sure could still use them, and they even didn't charge for the colored cartridge, it wasn't up to par I guess, and that one is still working, while I went through two black cartridges very quickly.
I wasn't sure about if I could get ink in the older printer from some years ago, but, they were filled. Maybe it's changed now with the expiration dates?
Also, check out the boxes from the refills, all of the boxes have coupons on the flaps, 50% off refills, though, they all have some tape is stuck on them all. They were from Walgreens too.
I wonder if it is possible to remove the chip and continue using the cartridges until they are really out of ink.
This isn't new news at all. Shame on HP. There is no reason that they need to have a chip to do that. The only reason they do it is so they can make money by selling you new cartridges. There was a law suit filed in Santa Clara, Ca. I do not know the status of that suit but it had to do with the smart chip in the ink cartridges.
The smart chip technology used in the ink cartridges is dually engineered to prematurely register ink depletion and to render a cartridge unusable through the use of a built-in expiration date that is not revealed to the consumer. The lawsuit seeks restitution, damages and other compensation.
We all can send a very clear message about our displeasure with HP's actions. It is very simple, STOP BUYING HP PRINTERS till the time they quite artificially rendering their printer cartridges useless.
The way to save a lot of money on ink is to get some off ebay and refill your own cartridges. It's a lot cheaper and the cartridge lasts a lot longer.
I'm not sure why, but refurbished ink cartridges have not worked for me in the past.
Thank You. I have a Lexmark and I had just purchased 2 XP (500 copies) cartridges off Ebay and they both just stopped, no warning, no nothing, was I furious! Lexmark did replace one but told me always to buy from an authorized dealer.
You can bet this will be my last HP printer. After two refills from Walgreens that didn't work I thought the printer was defective PLUS the refills never last as long as the new ones.
Thank you for sharing this information. Shame on HP.
I used to refill ink cartridges, but had a number of bad experiences - the nozzles had dried before I got around to it, and I couldn't get them clean again; cartridges leaked; and refilled color cartridges would print some colors fine but not others. I concluded that it was not cost-effective, over the long run, to refill them.
What I do instead is buy refurbished cartridges (may I put in a plug for CarrotInk.com? They're a family business, and their service is superb). They cost perhaps half as much as buying brand-new cartridges from the store, and they're guaranteed. They test them before shipping, and if you do get a bad one they'll replace it free!
I buy ink cartridges in bulk when I find a good deal. One time I put a cartridge in and the message came up that the cartridge was about to expire. The printer asked if I wanted to continue and possible "ruin" my printer. I didn't know how an expired cartridge could hurt (maybe it would be dried up and not print?) so I went ahead and everything worked fine
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