Friday fun ... our Lexmark C524DN printer beeps this morning and tells us that the Magenta toner is low. These are colour "starter" cartridges in a 6 month old printer, so I expect the other two to go soon.
Web searches show the average cost of high-yield colour cartridges to be about $260-$330. The bloke in my local printer shop has confirmed that he can't get much cheaper than that. He said his previous attempts to refill these brands were not successful and he's abandoned working on them. He thinks there might be other shops who have refilled them successfully and suggests I ring around. So, thanks to the evil international conspiracy of printer manufacturer cartels, the cost of replacing the colours will be more than the original price of the printer. Do I dump this 40kg monster in the bay and buy a new one, or is there are way of getting the colours refilled or replaced for a "reasonable" price? I'm in the Melbourne south east suburbs if anyone has suggestions about where to look, or perhaps where the best AU online bargains are. I continue to ring shops and web search... Greg Ps. Imagine buying a $40,000 car with half a tank of petrol. You have fun driving it for a few weeks before the fuel light flashes. Then you find a full tank of petrol costs $55,000. What do you do?
