[leonidasv]

Toner printers are "less scammy", at least in my experience. I had a HP one and always bought the genuine cartridges.

Then I saw those videos about the printing industry scams (which does happen) and tried a third party toner that costs 1/5 of the price. Guess what? After like 10 perfect printed pages, it started leaking some powder, then stopped printing random chunks of the page and turned impossible to use.

I went back to the genuine cartridges and never left ever since. Also, the printing issues it had were identical to some issues I've had with public printers in libraries etc in the past. I guess that's because they're using those low-quality toners.

[a2tech]

My large institution mandated a switch to OfficeMax/Staples remanufactured toners to save (truly huge sums) of money. It was an unmitigated disaster. The toners leaked. When they didn't leak, the toner failed to fuse appropriately to the paper which made for an atrocious print quality and since the toner started flaking off even while still in the machine it would build up on everything and lead to smearing and then damage to the printer.

My department switched to buying toners directly from the manufacturer and reimbursing staff to get around the financial blocks that were put in to place. After two years they dropped the policy as a complete waste. We paid out so much money in repairs, new cartridges, new printers, and management that it made buying 'real' toner look cheap. Theoretically OfficeMax/Staples offered repair guarantees on their toners but of course managing those warranty claims is essentially impossible when you have thousands of printers scattered around.

[coldpie]

I need to refill the toner in my home laser printer. I looked at some of the clone cartridges on Amazon etc and >90% of the reviews are of the form, "The cartridges arrived broken, but the seller gave me a full refund! Five stars, excellent service." Like, every single review. So either they're really shoddy and these people are extraordinarily forgiving, or they're buying reviews trying to alleviate worries from people who read reports like yours.

[giancarlostoro]

I wonder if you should be reporting those types of reviews to Amazon as misleading. They're reviewing the seller, not the product.

[coldpie]

Maybe, but you're talking thousands of reviews. (Also I closed my Amazon account years ago and don't shop there.)

[dsr_]

Amazon doesn't care.

[lnsru]

I also have laser printer. It’s ancient low budget color(!) Dell with genuine cartridges. Yes, they were expensive, but now the price is dropping. And I never had any quality issues with genuine cartridges on this device. Before I toyed with all the cheap ink jets and drying nozzles. Extremely bad experience.

[nobleach]

Yeah, if you can find an HP LaserJet III - V, chances are, it's still printing just fine. Worst thing that ever went wrong in any of those things is the fuser. I worked on Color LaserJets too and everything was replaceable/pluggable. They were extremely rugged.

[timbit42]

I've bought dozens of NEW third party cartridges for a variety of laser printer models and have never had an issue. I stay away from the third party REFILLED cartridges.