PRINTER INK SCAM ALERT

OUT of Printer Ink? What's going on? You've only printed 50 pages over the past year and now it's empty?

Not so fast HP ... YOUR BUSTED!

A couple of years ago, my colleague Rick Genovese bought an HP 8610 All in One Printer for his home office. It worked great until one day it just stopped printing from one of the cartridges. Seems like a pretty normal and benign occurrence. However ...

The message on the screen was "One or More Cartridges is Empty".

So he took the cartridge to COSTCO for refilling (FYI, Costco is an Authorized Ink Refiller AND MORE, keep reading). Here's where the plot thickens.

The nice lady at the counter weighs the cartridge and tells me it still has 50% of its ink. So how can it be empty?

She asks Rick, "Would you like me to replace the Date Chip?" Rick is stunned by the question. Seems like a strange question, so he asks, "Don't you mean refill the Cartridge?"

She explained the whole HP Date Stamp Scam and says as an Authorized Refiller for HP they can also replace the date stamp chip. Rick can now finish the ink in the Cartridge! For Free!

So now when Rick takes his inkjet cartridges into Costco for refilling, he also has them replace the date stamp chips.

Gotta love COSTCO. A full refill of an HP XL Cartridge with a new Date Stamp Chip is $12.99.

If you are not a heavy user and your Cartridges sit for a long time the date stamp may expire, Costco will replace the Date Stamp Chip for FREE.

Here's a link to COSTCO's pricing for Inkjet Refilling;

http://costcoinkjetrefill.ca/pricing

This is a Great Consumer Affairs Article about this Scam;

Planned Obsolescence Comes to Ink Cartridges; Some HP, Lexmark Cartridges Shut Down after a Predetermined Time.

https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2007/02/ink_cartridges.html

Happy Printing!