----- Original Message ----- From: "Bob" <w8imo@xxxxxxxx>
To: "PhotoForum educational network" <photoforum@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Tuesday, March 17, 2015 10:06 AM Subject: printer ink
My Canon Pro 9000 died and I bought Pro 9000 MkII. When I had my first Canon photo printer the print head died and the guy at the service shop told me to use Canon ink. He was very serious to the point that he replaced my aftermarket in with Canon ink at no charge. Havin been in computer service for forty years and being used to using "our" ink I only used Canon ink in the Pro 9000. Has anyone had experiences, good or bad, with aftermarket ink? Any brands better than others?
After I stopped working as a lecturer in chemistry and optical physics in the advanced diploma of science, photography course at CMC TAFE, Perth, I became the technian for Photography, Graphic Design and Multimedia, after that, working for WA's largest photographic distributor, I decided to train to sell and service the Canon range of wide format printers, so I went to the other side of the country and trained with Canon Australia .. the trainers discussed the issue of inks at length, saying in their experience, they'd not seen any issues with aftermarket inks, especially as all Canon inks are made by third parties who sell the same inks to whomever wants to buy them - they deduced most of the afermarket sellers could just as easy buy Canon inks as any other, and it made sense for their business model to buy legitimate inks, pack them in their own containers and sell them as the highest quality inks they could provide. This made sense.. why sell low grade inks and risk an unhappy customer?
The techs also said that while in the past they'd been quick to blame aftermarket inks for printer malfunctions, a few test cases found them unable to prove it was the inks fault, and they found themselves in a sticky legal situation by making such claims.. Especially claims about voided warranties. As a result we were told to allude to 'risks' from using third party inks and to suggest that using genuine inks *reduced* the risk of head problems (couldn't say it would stop the problems, many a head has blocked and fouled on legitimate inks).
Of course this is all basic psychology.. if a head goes wonky AND the user has aftermarket inks, the presumption is correlation implies causation. This is a logical fallacy.
Same when I got a pair of wide format printers at TAFE set up on aftermarket inks, under the premise that if they caused issues, we'd simply switch back to genuine inks. Note that BOTH of these printers blocked up on genuine Epson inks within 6 months of purchasing them, and at least once a year each blocked badly thereafter.. After I fitted these tanks, the printers ran siz months with no issues at all - however a year after I left, one blocked - guess what was blamed by the Epson tech? Aftermarket inks.
k
