Ink refill

I hate buying inkjet cartridges, they are expensive, and I always get the feeling that I am getting ripped off.


I am never sure about ink refill services, I have heard stories that can be kind of scary. But when Walgreens had a free ink refill promotion yesterday, I took my HP 57 ink cartridge there to give it a shot. I figure it doesn't cost me anything to give it a try.


Below is a link to Walgreens' info page on their refill program/cost.

http://www.walgreens.com/printercartridge/


It costs about $19.99 for the #56 black cartridge, and refill for $10.
It costs about $34.99 for the #57 color cartridge, and refill for $15.

The savings for color cartridge would be significant, if it works.

After I got the refilled cartridge, I printed a test page, and it shows the color looked pretty good, but after it sat overnight, I printed another test page (a google map), the red is no longer showing up properly (more purple), and the highlighted route that appears yellow-orange on the screen, looks yellow-green printed on paper.

For additional test:
I ran a clean cartridge function, printed a test page, then performed the same function with a genuine HP cartridge.

Comparing the colors:
Cyan is good.
Magenta is off with the refill, it looks has too much blue.
Yellow looks puke green.
Purple is good.
Green is good
Red appears purple/brown.

Also, the colors from the refill has lines across (not solid).

Here's a scan for comparison:

The top row is using genuine HP cartridge, and the bottom row is from refill.

This is disappointing, I am not sure if they just filled wrong color in the cartridge or not, it is hard to tell, and I am not sure if I want to bother to go back to that store to find out. For general printing of records and such, I am probably just going to use up this cartridge, but for sure not going to use this for photo printing, :)

dave