The Dangers of Refilling Your Own Printer Cartridges

t’s 2013 and for many people, a new year means dedicating themselves to bettering themselves in a multitude of ways. One of the most common New Year’s resolutions is to spend less money, cutting back on the excess of the previous year in order to spend money on more worthwhile things.

As any avid reader of the Cartridge World blog will attest to, one of the areas anyone can make big savings on is printing, whether you’re an infrequent printer of your child’s latest MS Paint masterpiece or a hardcore Word doc addict churning out reams of paper a day. Printing is also ripe for savings in the average business environment, saving you a bundle on your office supplies bill.

We’ve outlined many ways to save money in the past but there is one method we’ve overlooked slightly; refilling your own cartridges. Whether at home or employing a dedicated cartridge refilling office lackey, refilling your own cartridges using a home refill kit is an inexpensive way of recycling your old ink cartridges.

But while the cost of using a home refill kit is relatively low, it can lead to some serious issues which can cost a lot to remedy. Here are some of the dangers of refilling your own cartridges at home.

Spillage

The most obvious hazard when refilling cartridges at home is spillage. Printer ink, as you might expect, is incredibly hard to get out of fabrics so even getting the slightest amount of ink on a cream carpet is enough to stain it for life. Ink also has a particular affinity for skin, an affinity that takes a great deal of scrubbing to wear off!

Of course, these kinds of mishaps are easily avoided with a bit of laid out newspaper and plastic gloves but if you’re particularly clumsy, you might want to think twice before investing in a refill kit.

Low Quality Ink

Like compatible print cartridges, the quality of the ink included in home refill kits can vary greatly. This is because ink and toner consists of a special formulation perfected over many years by printer manufacturers, and researched extensively by print cartridge specialists such as Cartridge World for refilled and compatible printer cartridges.

Unfortunately, not all refill kits can match this kind of quality resulting in poor quality prints that represent something of a false economy. As a general rule, avoid ‘universal’ refill kits and take caution before investing in any refill kit by looking at previous customer reviews.

Damage To Your Printer

Again, this isn’t something that applies to all home refill kits but refilling your own cartridges if you aren’t entirely sure what you are doing can lead to a whole range of disasters that could end up costing you a lot of money.

Chief among them is ink leaking from the cartridge due to incorrectly carrying out the refilling process. Leaking ink can cause permanent damage to your printer and this damage may not be covered by any warranty you hold with the manufacturer.

Poor quality ink can also lead to printheads becoming clogged; this isn’t necessarily an issue with printheads attached to cartridges (although it does mean splashing out on a new cartridge) but for printheads attached to the actual printer, it can lead to you having to reinvest in a new printer entirely.

It’s important to point out at this point that thousands of people refill their own cartridges every year with little to no incident, but for peace of mind, it may be a better idea to take your old cartridges along to your local Cartridge World for expert treatment and a guarantee that our cartridges will work perfectly - or your money back!