Finding Toner Cartridge Discounts Online

Buying new ink and toner cartridges for your printer should not be a painful experience that you need to budget for far in advance, it should be a simple process that costs you as little money as humanly possible. Unfortunately for all too many people this is not the case, and going to the office store to purchase a new cartridge for their printer can end up costing $15 or even as much as $70 or $80 just for a black cartridge. There are of course black toner cartridge discounts, and color cartridge discounts as well, but finding a real discount that shaves more than a couple of dollars off of the end bill can be a process in its own right. So what is a savvy consumer to do in order to avoid breaking open the piggy bank in order to refill the printer?

Turn to the internet, of course! One of the few advantages of being in the midst of a rough recession is the prevelance of various websites and independent retailers who offer ink and toner cartridges at a far lower rate than you will find on the shelves of an office supply store downtown. These websites tend to offer a broad selection of products ranging from generic cartridges for multiple printers to something as specific as canon pixma mp250 ink cartridges for much lower rates than you will find at a big box retail store. As with all online retailers, some of these businesses are slightly shady and may offer you bad deals or hidden fees, or the shipping costs might eclipse any potential discount that you get on the original purchase, but the majority of the online retailers are legitimate businesses that really will save you a great deal of money. The best way to ensure that you choose the right retailer is just to look up customer reviews to see if anything shady is written about them, and remember that most online ink retailers are fairly safe to buy from.

So how do these online stores offer better deals than the big name retail outfits at the strip mall? Well, for starters, they are able to avoid having to spend as much money on rent for storefronts. Make no mistake, having low overhead makes a big difference that gets passed down to you, the consumer; but the real discounts come from buying bulk purchases and being more flexible with their profit margins than major corporations tend to be. These companies also save people money by offering products and services that you will not find in any storefront operation, such as a very wide selection of compatible (ie: generic) ink and toner cartridges, remanufactured cartridges, and refill kits for you to do the work on your own. Some of these alternative products do find their way to store shelves, but the refill kits and remanufactured cartridges definitely tend to be much more common on the internet.

Many people might shy away from purchasing a remanufactured or compatible ink or toner cartridge from a company they have never heard of out of concern about the quality of the product they will receive or its compatibility with their printer. These are reasonable concerns that have some basis in reality, particularly when it comes to compatibility. Many printers these days come with proprietary security features that prevent third party products from being used in the printer, and sometimes the generic cartridge that you buy simply will not work. However situations like that are less common than you might think, and are certainly less common than the shenanigans from the major printer companies as well. The major brand names may have spent millions of dollars establishing themselves as the epitome of trustworthy and dependability, but the fact is that many (if not most) of these companies rig their cartridges to force you to replace them before they are empty, often leaving as much as 20% of the ink and toner behind. Unfortunately this boils down to having to choose between taking a slight risk on whether your compatible canon ink cartridge might malfunction, or knowing that your genuine Canon cartridge will most definitely waste a little less than a quarter of the ink you purchased.

So as you can see with each discount comes with its own advantages and disadvantages to be weighed against the money you save on the initial purchase. There is no clear and easy route to finding discounted ink and toner cartridges for your printer, barring actually working for a printer manufacturing company, and thus it all boils down to choosing the best option that you are comfortable with. You can save a great deal of money by purchasing your next cartridges from an online retailer instead of a physical storefront location, but it would be wise to do your research ahead of time to make sure you are getting the best deal possible and avoiding any risk. It is possible to save a great deal of money on your printing supplies, but you need to put in a little effort on that first search to get those discounts.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.