Low cost inkjet cartridges - recommended filling service

Last month I wrote about the panic I had with my son's expired passport that eventually required three trips to the Peterborough passport office as the photoshop editing caused the passport pictures to be rejected. All sorted in the end but at the time it was a bit stressful not knowing if we'd get a passport issued in time.

In amongst all the problems I had was the colour cartridge on my HP inkjet printer running out - passport photos in magenta and black would definitely not be accepted by the Passport Office!

Once we got back from France I needed to get a replacement ink cartridge. HP make excellent photo quality printers but they charge a fortune for their ink cartridges - circa £25 is not uncommon for the colour cartridge.

Looking in Tesco soon afterwards I saw that they were selling "refurbished" cartridges at 2 for £30 - better but still not good enough so I decided to turn to ebay.

After wading through the plenitude of options I eventually settled on an inkjet cartridge filling service. I'd never tried one of these before but the seller had a good feedback rating and offered a 100% guarantee so I thought I'd give it a go.

Magazine articles I've read have said that filling your own cartridges is the cheapest way of running an inkjet printer but equally tales of blocked nozzles, ink stains on your hands and leaking cartridges have put me off the idea myself. Paying someone else for their expertise seems a small price to pay.

I have to report being very pleased with the service and re-filled cartridge which appears to work as good as a brand new one from HP.

In total it cost me £6.55 for the replacement cartridge (£3.25 for the item off ebay, £2 for the return postage and £1.30 for me to send the cartridge off) - roughly half what it would have cost in the shops.

I'm more than happy therefore to recommend Compatible Imaging Technologists' inkjet filling service.