Ink Jet Printers

    I like Costco. I find they generally have a limited selection of good quality items. Their selection is limited, but for what they carry it is generally adequate. They don't carry much in the way of specialty items. For those things you need to go to a specialty store.
    Dutiful daughter needs ink cartridges for her HP printer. She has at least one more term of school and expects to use the heck out of her printer. My advice was to go to Office Depot. Every ink jet printer in the world is different and requires a different cartridge and Office Depot has an entire department stocked with all nine zillion varieties of ink jet cartridges. Costco wouldn't mess with something like that, would they? Turns out they would, and a little research on ye olde internet reveals that the ones from Costco do if fact contain more ink, which makes their higher price worthwhile, assuming you are going to print a bunch, which she is, so Costco it is.
    We get to Costco and find the ink jet cartridges, and as expected the selection is limited. I don't think they had more than about 10 different packages, and they were all combo packs, like two blacks and one color cartridge per package.
    We are walking away and I realize that I need cartridges for my ink jet printer, so we back track to check, and what do you know? They have cartridges for my Canon Pixma as well. Cool.
    We are checking out and the cashier tells us that their customer service desk offers refills for ink jet cartridges. I am a little suspicious of this. I bought a refill kit once upon a time and the refilled cartridge leaked, which made a mess, which had to be cleaned up, and then I had to go buy a new cartridge anyway. So I have an aversion to refills.
    We get home and find out that my wife needs refills for her Dell ink jet printer. Dell, in case you didn't know, has a lock on supplying cartridges for their printers. Kind of annoying, but when the printer gets low on ink, you can just point and click, and presto, new cartridges are on their way to you (along with a charge on your credit card). This printer doesn't get used much. It only needs cartridges once or twice a year, it's been reliable, and the order process is painless, so we stuck with it. Until today.
    Today we can't order new cartridges. Our printer isn't listed on their website. Get onto their online help and chat with Mr. Roboto. He goes away for a bit, but eventually comes back to tell us that Dell no longer supplies cartridges for that printer. What!?!? This printer isn't even ten years old. It's hardly gotten broken in, and you've quit making cartridges for it? Bad Dell. I guess we'll be trying out Costco's refill service.