By now most have heard about Staples no longer offering Staples brand remanufactured cartridges. They struck a deal with Hewlett Packard that would prevent them from carrying anything but HP brand cartridges in their stores.

We’ll provide more opinion on this later, but for now let’s address an issue we brought up in a previous post. We had previously discussed HP giving the consumer a chance to decided which types of printer cartridges they would like to use. One could say that a move like this severely inhibits the consumers ability to fairly decide between the HP brand and an alternative.

So, we must continue to do what we always do. Remind consumers that there are alternatives. The alternatives are often less expensive and more environmentally friendly than the HP branded product. At Pacific Ink we want to offer consumers a choice. If you want the HP brand cartridge, you can get it here. But, it will come with a postage paid plastic recycling bag you should use to recycle your empty cartridge — don’t throw it in the trash. The empty cartridges you send back in the bag are then remanufactured and sold as a remanufactured cartridge. Another alternative we offer. Are you a Do-it-Yourselfer? Then you would probably prefer one of our cartridge refill kits. We send you the ink and all the tolls. You refill the cartridge. Best of all, using remanufactured/recycled cartridges or refill kits will cost you less then using the HP brand product.

The remanufactured cartridge industry poses a threat to the printer manufacturers and the ink cartridges they sell. They have provided inexpensive printers to create a need for their expensive printer cartridges. The Staples - HP agreement means that when you go to a Staples to buy an HP printer, the only printer cartridges you will see there are HP brand cartridges. NO ALTERNATIVES!

Now maybe some folks don’t mind, but we hear from many each day that do. Staples is making it a little harder, but make sure you do your research on alternative sources for printer cartridges when making the decision as to which printer you will buy.

Give us your thoughts on Staples decision. We’ll follow up on this topic later.