Many years ago when I was a copier technician my boss would always tell us to push our companies supplies, paper, toner etc.. Of course they wanted to sell more supplies and make more money but their techniques were very questionable. Just like printers you could go out and purchase generic supplies and some worked better than others naturally. Well the supplies that we sold were also mostly generic, however, they were branded with our companies name and logos. Here's where the sneakiness comes in. When a customer complained about a repair cost estimate we were told to blame it on their inferior generic supplies and to further that the repair would have been much cheaper if they were using our over-priced supplies.

I explained this to many customers on many occasions while desperately trying to suppress my rage at being forced to hand this BS to unknowing customers while I knew full well that what I was telling them was absolutely untrue. I knew at the time that the generic supplies my customers were using had nothing to do with the expensive repair costs but you know what? They all bought the idea, almost every customer that I explained this to started buying all their supplies from us. BECAUSE, I was an authority figure and a perceived expert in my field.

This scenario lends itself fabulously to the printer market. Threats from the manufacturers, the perceived experts, that your printer will suffer an untimely death if you use generic supplies or refill your cartridges. There's no truth to this at all. The printer manufacturers want to sell you their over-priced supplies and they will lie to you to get your business.

Here is how you can have some fun with your printer manufacturers technical representative. Call their help line and tell them you are having trouble refilling one of their cartridges and ask them for some help because it's not working. Don't expect a warm response. You can expect the same response if you called your car dealership complaining that your car won't start after filling the gas tank with water! The technicians are trained to drill you to find out if you are using generic supplies or refilling your cartridges. Then if they discover that you are whatever problem that you are experiencing will be blamed on the supplies. So you see, weather you are refilling or not, using generic supplies or not, never, EVER, admit this to them or the support stops immediately.

If you are having problems most manufacturers will simply send you another printer as long as your warranty is still good, UNLESS it is discovered that you are using generic or refilled cartridges. Printers break down, that's life. But permanent mechanical malfunctions are rarely caused by bad cartridges. If the cartridge is at fault simply replacing the cartridge will fix the problem 99% of the time. An exception might be if a cartridge severely leaked inside the printer, but I've seen OEM's do this too.

Never send a printer back with the cartridges left inside. They will usually tell you to do this anyhow but it's also good insurance in case you left some generic or refilled cartridges in the printer. Don't give them any ammunition to use against you.