Printer Cartridge Refills $5 Each at Walgreens

[indieretailer]

Walgreens is offering to refill your printer ink cartridges for $5 each this week! Normally they charge $15 for color cartridges and $10 for black, which is still a fantastic deal. And, no, they don't just have some fella sitting down with a bunch of ink buckets and a syringe poking holes in your cartridges. They have professional cartridge refilling machines and perform pressure tests and print tests prior to charging you for the service.

There are two relatively minor downsides to cartridge refills that you may want to consider.

1. Refill ink is not going to match the color of OEM ink. Refill ink is not bad, just different. So depending on your projects, you might take that into consideration if you need consistency across hundreds of pages.
2. Some printers won't recognize the ink in the cartridge and therefore, won't show you the fill level to let you know when you're running low. It will still print and function as normal, you'll just need to keep an eye on your page's print quality to know when to change cartridges again.

There's one other bit of misinformation that may need to be cleared up about ink refills. Using refilled or remanufactured ink cartridges DOES NOT void your printer warranty. This was the case at one time, until HP was sued for antitrust violations setting a precedent requiring manufacturers to allow their customers to purchase ink from any source.

Final note to consider: If you take into account how much ink is actually in a typical consumer grade ink cartridge, and the cost of a cartridge ranging from $16-70 per cartridge (for the same quantity of ink), if you calculate it out, printer ink seems to be overlooked as probably the most expensive everyday consumer fluid at about $8000 per gallon! Do you think there's a bit of profit margin there?

Now can you see why HP was sued and the value in refilling cartridges? Not to mention that refilling is recycling, and there's no downside there!

[candymandy180]

Is this coupon based or a nationwide sale?

[Anthony Marrone]

I just came from Walgreens and they said there is no coupon, it's an advertised in-store special this week...The assistant manager didn't say whether there was any limit, although I can imagine that if I showed up with 37 empty black cartridges they might get a little testy...

[indieretailer]

Originally Posted by amarrone

I just came from Walgreens and they said there is no coupon, it's an advertised in-store special this week...The assistant manager didn't say whether there was any limit, although I can imagine that if I showed up with 37 empty black cartridges they might get a little testy...

Testy-schmesty! You're correct in that there's no coupon; just show up with empties in hand. There's no published limits so come with as many as you have. My husband does a LOT of printing with the Dollar Card Marketing project and handed over 2 dozen cartridges yesterday and will pick them up today. They cheerfully accepted and even giggled at the amount of money the register calculated his savings at. I think he told me that they said he was saving over $150... and THAT's only off their regular refill price which is even a greater savings if he had to replace those cartridges with new!

John (my husband) told me that they had this special sale once before but didn't publish it and they also had one time where they were doing it for free (that was the only one where they placed a quantity limit). So, I'd imagine they just do this once in a while as a loss leader to acquire new customers.

[purplefdu]

It was advertised in the sales flyer but did not have a limit. Go to Walgreens.com - Online pharmacy & drugstore, prescriptions, health information, photo center and check the box for ink refills on the store search to find a store that does it. Our local one does it so we had to pass. The tw that do are 30mins away and not worth the drive just for cheap in refills. It made me rather sad as I could use more ink for printing coupons.

[moneyman]

I find that for day-to-day printing jobs, a third party ink cartridge saves more money than refilling. Staples and Office depot sell their own store brands which are comparable to the refilling cost. However less known brands are available on-line and cost only a fraction of the OEM cartridge cost. Found some interesting information at Three ways to save on printer ink

[amyschiff]

If you have a Canon printer, you may want to consider sticking with canon brand cartridges. Using third party cartridges can mess up your print head....which is about a $90 repair. The certified canon repair shop told my family that third party ones have a higher water content than the real canon ones so that can cause problems.

Just something to look out for.

[indieretailer]

Originally Posted by amyschiff

If you have a Canon printer, you may want to consider sticking with canon brand cartridges. Using third party cartridges can mess up your print head....which is about a $90 repair. The certified canon repair shop told my family that third party ones have a higher water content than the real canon ones so that can cause problems.

Just something to look out for.

This is what HP was telling their customers too, as well as voiding their warrantees if third party inks were used. They were sued and lost a class action suit.

[amyschiff]

Thankfully Canon didn't void warranties, and now I believe there is some legislation prohibiting it. Our printer started acting kinda funky, which is why we took it in to the repair shop, so we have sadly gone back to brand name cartridges