Save money and make money at the same time! (Recycled Cartridges)

Member Name: GR-Design

Product:	Recycled Cartridges
Date:	24/04/03 (1396 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good for the environment, Good for your pocket, Make money on something you'd normally throw away

Disadvantages: Non

This may not be the most exciting opinion out there that you could read at the moment, and I?m not going to try and jazz it up with sexual references, canny humour or making myself look stupid (ok, so maybe!).

Ink cartridges cost most of us a small fortune for something that's about exciting as getting given a salad when you want something proper to eat!! (It's not exciting for us men!). You will normally be shelling out well over £20 for an ink cartridge for your printer and that's just for a black, we've got colour to contend with too. What with kids using computers to do their homework, adults using it for financial purposes and running the household bits and pieces, those ink cartridges soon turn into a small fortune when you have to go and purchase another one.

This is certainly true when you have a Hewlett Packard printer and until recently, there wasn't much you could do about it. You had to go and buy the original cartridges like it or lump it. There are however now alternatives!

The Ink Factory (www.theinkfactory.co.uk) supply ink cartridges for nearly every make and model of printer out there. They also, where possible stock re-manufactured cartridges. What this means is that the company who provides these cartridges have basically filled empty cartridges back up again and sold them to a supplier. They use good inks, sometimes better than original cartridges, the only difference is, you have a second hand ink cartridge. Nothing bad in that though, we all buy second hand cars do we not?

But why would you want to buy these? The price difference. I use a lot of HP printers for work purposes. Here at work we spent over £2000 last year on cartridges for our HP printers. They were costing us about £22 a piece for black ink cartridges. That was until I decided to look around and see what I could get, The Ink Factory grabbed me by the knackers and pulled me in. They have re-filled (re-manufactured) ink cartri
dges and also origin
al cartridges for a wide variety of printers. The re-manufactured cartridges come in the form of 'Alphajet' cartridges (www.alphajet.com) and also their own 'the ink factory' re-filled cartridges.

I wasn't too sure though, it's always the same isn't it, your never quite sure whether to change your habits or not. However, when I saw the price difference they were mine! £22 for an original HP ink cartridge or £14 for a re-filled cartridge with double the amount of ink in it, yes you did hear me right, that's DOUBLE! You see, HP are crafty, they give you these big cartridges, but they only half fill a lot of them, making sure you come back for more. These re-manufacturing company don't do that, they just top em right up making sure you get your monies worth.

Add to my excitement the offer of free delivery and I was typing in my credit card details quite happily, getting rather excited and then slapping myself repeatedly trying to remind myself just what I was getting excited over! (someone rescue me!)

The cartridges arrived within a week, so not to bad for free delivery. I opened my green box, and inside, a cartridge (wow, getting excited again) ready to pop in it's hole and spurt it's stuff (ok, sorry, I remember now, I told you I wouldn't do anything naughty). In all seriousness, I wasn't expecting anything special, but what I got was a cartridge just as good as an original. The print quality was fine, nothing wrong whatsoever. I was happy, and still am, and have so far gone further an ordered probably about 20 of the things and no one in the place has complained yet. Always good in my view.

The Ink Factory are not the cheapest place out, I do have to say that there are other places that do come cheaper, but for service etc, this place has to come up tops and I won't be going elsewhere. They do a jet tec 2 for 1 deal, which basically means your gett
ing jet tec cartridges for around a fiver each for blacks, a lot of places do do
better deals than this, but I'm happy where I am.

Ok, so onto the problems! These re-manufactured cartridges are no good for presentations on glossy or better quality paper. I have found the ink resembles newspaper ink and comes off on your fingers if you use special paper. So best to stick to the originals for the presentation work. However, for normal printing purposes, letters, homework etc etc on standard photo copier paper you can't go wrong and the ink doesn?t come off on your fingers with standard paper either.

The ink factory employ friendly people, and seem a good company. I have only had one problem and it was with a big order. Unfortunately they didn't have the quantity or cartridges I wanted in stock, so I had to wait, but I did get the cartridges they did have, in total, they sent me out 3 parts to my order, sending me the cartridges they did have and sending me the others when they could get them.

Highly recommended

Now, onto the good part, if you have read this far well done because you are about to get rewarded! For any of you who do a lot of printing, you might aswell make a littile bit of money back on your empty cartridges. How do you think these re-manufacturing places work? Yes, that's right, they will buy your empty cartridges off you for a small sum. Only HP, Lexmark and Canon (among other makes) qualify here though, Epson's do not qualify. If you have used or use original cartridges, when they run out, don't throw them away.

These cartridges can be recycled instead of filling up the landfills. They can be converted into cash, they can be converted into points for your school, they can raise money for charities, they can make money for the red cross, the choice is yours, all you have to do is keep your empty ink cartridges and send them off freepost to whichever of the companies you wish,
whether you want to make money for your school, a charity or your bank account, the choice is yours.


Just follow these links as I don't really think I need to say much more on the subject of boring, nerdish ink cartridges!

http://www.box-shift.co.uk/cgi-bin/empties.asp
www.oink-oink.com
http://www.cartridges4charity.co.uk/
www.alphajet.com
www.emptycartridge.co.uk


There are many more out there too. Happy printing!

Summary: