Very cheap carts on ebay form Epson R300 etc - should I buy ?

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Anorak

UK readers

Ink is ink I thought but how could these damage my Epsom R300m ? ie complete
sets of 6 for 99p plus posage and seperate carts for 2p ?????
 
We read about you guys all of the type with permanent clogged print
heads from the cheap of the cheap inks.
 
Anorak said:
UK readers

Ink is ink I thought but how could these damage my Epsom R300m ? ie
complete sets of 6 for 99p plus posage and seperate carts for 2p ?????
Click to expand...

Because they're crap.

Oh and Epsom is a town in Surrey.
 
UK readers

Ink is ink I thought but how could these damage my Epsom R300m ? ie complete
sets of 6 for 99p plus posage and seperate carts for 2p ?????
Click to expand...

If it seems too good to be true ...
 
The vast majority of 3rd party ink is crap. There is some that
manufacturer ink ie sensinent but they are the only one I know of in the
US. There are no name BRAND carts and no body putting together a name
BRAND ink with a high quality cart and selling it under the brand of the
ink through all of the normal marketing chanels where they tell you what
you are buying.

Most of the 3rd party ink is sold buy hawkers. Very little investment
in a web business. Even a well known company like Fry's has a small
selection of no name shit they try to pass off as ink. The box even
says works in all printers.

Translated that means it clogs all brands of printheads.
 
Miss Perspicacia Tick said:
Because they're crap.
Click to expand...

Care to elaborate why ?! I'm sure there ok for most users. What I'm really
concerned about is if they can damge the print heads and if so how ?

Oh and Epsom is a town in Surrey.
Click to expand...

I said Epson in the subject !

Seemed like a good bloke. As John Donne said, "Every man's death dimishes me
 
lots of "expert" advice from a guy that has never tried a third party ink!
I have used MIS inks (reputed to be Image Specialist ink made by an
extremely large, reputable company in the US) in my canon printer and have
had no problems at all. Excellent product. There are several vendors who,
when asked, will tell you that their source is Formulabs. There are some
excellent non-OEM inks out there. I don't know the vendors for Epson or in
the UK.

measekite said:
The vast majority of 3rd party ink is crap. There is some that
manufacturer ink ie sensinent but they are the only one I know of in the
US. There are no name BRAND carts and no body putting together a name
BRAND ink with a high quality cart and selling it under the brand of the
ink through all of the normal marketing chanels where they tell you what
you are buying.

Most of the 3rd party ink is sold buy hawkers. Very little investment in
a web business. Even a well known company like Fry's has a small
selection of no name shit they try to pass off as ink. The box even says
works in all printers.
Click to expand...
(clip)
 
Robert A. Heinlein once wrote those immortal words TANSTAAFL.
There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
Buy those cartridges and you'll **** up your printer.
-or- your priner won't work with those cartridges.
Either way, you've wasted your money

Use genuine Epson ink cartridges.
Use genuine Epson paper.
Your printer will perfoirm at its maximum.

Any deviance from the above and you will see sub-par output from your Epson
printer.

I do NOT work for Epson.
 
That may or may not be true for Epson printers, but I am in touch with lots
of people who are using aftermarket inks with Canon printers and have had
excellent results and no more problems with their printers than one would
have with OEM inks. I had severe clogging problems with my Epson Stylus 900
WITH Epson inks. Fortunately I got in touch with Art Entlich who has
written up instructions on clearing clogs in Epson printers. He uses
aftermarket inks and you might contact him to see what he has been
successful with. Watch for his next post on this NG as he is changing his
email address. I have had no problems with aftermarket inks with my Canon
i960. By the way, this is not a "free lunch." Canon sells 14ml of ink in a
little plastic cartridge for $12 US and the primary ingredient is water. -
The aftermarket inks are sold for much, much less and the vendors still make
a decent profit. Although there are some junk inks on the market there are
also some excellent ones made by substantial manufacturers who wholesale it
to small vendors who repackage it and sell it to us. So goes the wheels of
commerce. I could buy these inks directly from the mfgr if I wanted a
gallon or more of each color, but four ounces of each is all I need for a
year's printing. To find out which inks are good quality one only needs to
watch the posts on this and other forums to see what people who are using
the products report. DO NOT be swayed by individuals who put down these
products although they have no personal experience with them. Colon may or
may not have ruined his printer with junk inks - maybe he will be so kind as
to let us know his OWN personal experiences as we can then stay away from
the products he found to be of poor quality.
 
Burt said:
lots of "expert" advice from a guy that has never tried a third party ink!
I have used MIS inks (reputed to be Image Specialist ink made by an
extremely large, reputable company in the US) in my canon printer and have
had no problems at all. Excellent product.
Click to expand...

I would like to know who this large reputable manufacturer company is.
What name do they go under and where is there stuff sold. Large
companies are grown large because they have many customers. Who are they?
 
Some of what you say makes sense. If a higher class of organizations
would sell 3rd party ink made and labeled by 3rd party
manufacturers/formulators that the good and bad would soon shake
themselves out and there may be good alternatives to the OEM's.
However, there may be one or two mfg lurking behind in the shadows that
are good but the way they are marketed it is almost impossible to
ascertain who they are. So yes, you are taking a chance.

As for paper the story is different. So far for the Canon using OEM
inks and maybe a few non OEM inks the paper from Office Depot (Konica?),
Canon Photo Paper Pro, Costco/Kirkland(Ilford?) and Epson Glossy
Standard Paper work fine. As a matter of fact Canon Tech support told
me that Epson paper works fine in the Pixma Printers.

As for Epson printers, I know that in addition to Epson, Office Depot
works fine.

The difference between paper and ink is that bad ink can ruin your
printer. Paper paper looks bad. In most of those cases you are not out
any money if you return it to the (reputable) store where you purchased
it and told them it does not work with your Printer.
 
Burt said:
That may or may not be true for Epson printers, but I am in touch with lots
of people who are using aftermarket inks with Canon printers and have had
excellent results and no more problems with their printers than one would
have with OEM inks. I had severe clogging problems with my Epson Stylus 900
WITH Epson inks. Fortunately I got in touch with Art Entlich who has
written up instructions on clearing clogs in Epson printers. He uses
aftermarket inks and you might contact him to see what he has been
successful with. Watch for his next post on this NG as he is changing his
email address. I have had no problems with aftermarket inks with my Canon
i960. By the way, this is not a "free lunch." Canon sells 14ml of ink in a
little plastic cartridge for $12 US and the primary ingredient is water. -
The aftermarket inks are sold for much, much less and the vendors still make
a decent profit. Although there are some junk inks on the market there are
also some excellent ones made by substantial manufacturers who wholesale it
to small vendors who repackage it and sell it to us. So goes the wheels of
commerce. I could buy these inks directly from the mfgr if I wanted a
gallon or more of each color, but four ounces of each is all I need for a
year's printing. To find out which inks are good quality one only needs to
watch the posts on this and other forums to see what people who are using
the products report. DO NOT be swayed by individuals who put down these
products although they have no personal experience with them.
Click to expand...

But be swayed by the logic your brain produces. On a regular basis
there are about 4 people here who continually tout their positive
experience with certain after market inks. And I believe they are
accurately portraying their experience. However, you do not know what
the experience of 100,000 others are or have been because the are not
here on this NG. Maybe there are many bad experiences out their. I
personally spoke to a guy who had to replace his print head on his i960
due to bad after market ink. He went back to Canon and has to
problems. The real problem is the after market industry itself in that
there are no real manufacturers selling carts or bottles under their own
brand name to a variety of places who then would compete and sell to
you. It is a cottage hobby industry and those are nice words. I did
not call them whores this time. And when you think about it many of
the large Corps in this industry are whores as well. Sure they have to
cover their expensive R&D but they shouldn't have to give a severance
package of over 42 million to some bitch that was fired.
 
Google both Sensient Formulabs and Image Specialists inks and read their
(extremely professional) web sites.
 
Burt said:
That may or may not be true for Epson printers, but I am in touch with lots
of people who are using aftermarket inks with Canon printers and have had
excellent results and no more problems with their printers than one would
have with OEM inks. I had severe clogging problems with my Epson Stylus 900
WITH Epson inks. Fortunately I got in touch with Art Entlich who has
written up instructions on clearing clogs in Epson printers.
Click to expand...

Is there a link to this article? as I am having a lot of clogging
problems with an Epson Stylus, thanks any info.
 
Burt...I don't know about Image Specialist ink...but I can tell you MIS
is a small company in rural Michigan.
When I had problems with one of their products...they said it was my
printer (which it wasn't).
Guarantee...not in my experience!

b_d
 
The website is nice. I wrote the following to them. If I get a reply I
will let you know.

BEGIN QUOTE==>
It is my understanding that you are a manufacturer/formulator of inks
and ink carts that may be a substitute for Canon OEM ink carts.

If that is the case what brand name do you sell under and in what stores
can I find that brand name.

I know that are a lot of hawkers hawking ink that hide behind websites
and one never knows what they are selling from one week to the next.
With a brand name that is sold in normal marketing channels one develops
a type of consistency and can ascertain if the product can cause
problems with the print head.

It seems that many people but not all have problems with 3rd party ink
damaging their printers and since I have not found branded products
freely available in the market place it is near impossible to separate
the problem inks from the few that may work well.

I would appreciate an answer on this subject.


Thank you
<== END QUOTE

I spoke to Sensinet and they informed it that they do NOT sell BRANDED
ink in either bulk or carts that are labeled under their name. Therefore
you will not find their product under the same name in multiple
marketing outlets. Most of their customers are super large consumers or
repackagers that stick a their own label on a repackaged product. They
further said that many of their generic competitors do the same and it
is indeed difficult knowing who is selling what.
Burt said:
Google both Sensient Formulabs and Image Specialists inks and read their
(extremely professional) web sites.
Click to expand...

Do not have to. One person having an experience does not mean as much
as 1000 people having an experience. For every one like you that are
many more having a poor experience with after market inks. You see it
is easy to conceive of a case of 10 happy people all using the exact
same ink purchased from 10 different sources under 10 different labels
and do not even have a clue that they are the same.

The same is true for inks that cause a problem.
Who Reputed it?
Who is the large reputable US company?

I believe you but a more precise and accurate statement would be that
you are a heavy users of MIS ink and have not had any problems up UNTIL
now.

You do not know if far less frequent users would have problems with
clogging. I can say with absolute certaintity that I am not a heavy
user and have had not problems with Canon OEM inks so far. Both of us
do not know what will happen in the future.
 
I had problems with MIS refills in my Epson Stylus 900 - color match
problems - but their Canon ink for my i960 is so close in color tone to OEM
ink that I would have difficulty picking out side-by-side prints from the
same photo. MIS was very cooperative in trying to help with the Epson
problem and subsequently comped me their Canon products to compensate me for
the problems with the Epson. I would stresss that no harm came to my Epson
printer and the downside was some frustration and wasted paper (from Costco,
so not much cost). To answer Measekite's response - I am not a regular
heavy user of these inks. My work goes in spurts. With OEM carts refilled
up to 8 times I finally had one that didn't feed well after sitting for a
week unused. I replaced all of the refilled OEM carts (8 months of use with
many refills) with MIS virgin carts I filled with their inks, and everything
ran just fine. After the printer sat idle for more than a week I did a
dozen 4x6's and 2 8x10 prints. No problems. MIS resells inks under their
own label. Neil Slade said, at one time, that they were Image Specialist
inks. I haven't tried to verify that info, but I've found the product to be
excellent.
 
Burt...I don't know about Image Specialist ink...but I can tell you MIS
is a small company in rural Michigan.
When I had problems with one of their products...they said it was my
printer (which it wasn't).
Guarantee...not in my experience!

b_d
Click to expand...

This is a representation of what happens when you deal with small
norname Vendors who have no presence other than a $2500 website.
Companies like Staples and Office Depot have large investments and a
physical presence to maintain and an image to protect. Even the major
camera websites have a physical presence. Not that all is good, mind you.
 
Colon Terminus said:
Robert A. Heinlein once wrote those immortal words TANSTAAFL.
There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.
Buy those cartridges and you'll **** up your printer.
-or- your priner won't work with those cartridges.
Either way, you've wasted your money
Use genuine Epson ink cartridges.
Use genuine Epson paper.
Your printer will perfoirm at its maximum.
Any deviance from the above and you will see sub-par output from your Epson
printer.
I do NOT work for Epson.
Click to expand...

Would you take advice from a self-described a$$hole (Colon Terminus)?
 
Sam said:
Would you take advice from a self-described a$$hole (Colon Terminus)?
Click to expand...

If you took your head out of the place where the sun don't shine and put
some chap stick on you lips you will find out that even though you do
not like the guy's presentation what he says does have some
creditability. My friend has an R300 and buys twin packs of Epson carts
at Office Depot plus he gets other credit bonuses for his other
purchases because he wants to insure himself of consistency. That does
not mean that he will never have trouble but it does mean he lowers his
exposure to all of the inconsistency and hardships in the industry.
 
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