28/04/2026
[THREAD]
Just a quick reminder as we had another case here of someone looking for ink for their printer and recently also another request to fix a TV at 8pm on a Saturday (ideally ready for the next day).
WE DO NOT SUPPLY PRINTER INK or CARTRIDGES OR PPARTS FOR PRINTERS at PC Spare Parts Ireland.
WE DO NOT FIX TV's
And WE DO NOT OFFER PHONE REPAIRS or PARTS FOR PHONES
Our Service offers can be found here:
https://pc-spare-parts-ireland.store/service/
We are happy to help you to install your printer on your Laptop or PC or have a look if something is wrong with your printer, but we do no fix them in general sense, as most models under the €250 mark, i.e. your typical Canon printer that you got in LIDL for under 50 quit, was never designed to be fixed in any shape or from.
So when the paper feed is broken, the ink absorbing tank is full and smeers your pages with ink or in case of other general errors, it is usually end of life for this device and this is by design.
Canon wants you to buy a new (better and more expensive) device. And that leads also to our main reason why we have stopped selling ink, printers & Co. already back in 2017/18.
People have little understanding on what they are buying, they do not understand for example every printer comes with a certain amount of pages you can print per per month (PPM - Pages Per Month - see your handbook or check the handbook for your printer online as PDF) to be within the capacity of the printers lifespan.
So if you get a €39,95 printer because it is a 'good deal' these printers have a PPM of 150 per month, if you then print constantly 300 pages per month, for example, you wear out the printer much faster that it is designed for. Besides from the fact that the stated claims are overated, similar to the 6L/100km car or the 8h battery life on a Laptop, which you will never see in real life.
If you haven't used your printer for months then usually the remaining ink in the cartridge (the liquid) dries up and the (black or color) pigment inside the liquid blocks the cartridge nossle.
So you have to buy a new cartridge, this again is by design.
It can, in some cases, still be fixed with the cleaning program of the printer, i.e. if it is a little more sophisticated with a menu for example you should find a cleaning option either in the menu under general settins or maintenance or the software driver that comes with the printer or is downloaded from the printer manufactureres website.
However you have to understand that the cleaning procedure the printer uses, works by trying to flush the cartridge with the ink from inside of the cartridge, while rubbing it over the cleaning pad that is above the the ink absobrbing tank.
This procedure will hence drain your ink, so while the nossle might become free eventually in that way you might be left with no ink afterwards to print and still have to replace the cartridge, again this is by design.
As there is a physical limitation on how much the ink absorbing tank can hold, similar to a glass that is overfull. The printer will render itself completely useless, start to smear when and when a certain thresholds is being reached stop altogether functioning with an error message.
If you ever got those weird blinking E error message then you know what I am talking about.
On 'good deal' machines between €39,95 - €70 there is usually no way to drain the tank or replace it in any shape or form, meaning it's time for new printer.
There might be some exceptions these days, we had a lady in last week who just happened to purchase the wrong ink absorbing tank, even though she promised she double checked, it physically just did not fit that particular device. We helped her to find the correct one on https://www.123ink.ie/
There are some qirky reset ways with dedicated devices that cost usually about 3x as much as the printer, to reset the error while there is no cute way to get the ink out of the absorbing tank, creating a huge mess (btw. also the same reason why we do not recomend when you bring in the printer to hold it up side down or stick it into a shopping bag vertically, just in case it happens (which it does all the time), again by design.
The default printer driver, offered by Microsoft's 'Plug & Play' driver might not offer a feature to clean the nozzle. That is why we allways install the original driver from the manufacturers website here for you, to make sure you or we, have that feature available when needed.
It is no secret, we used to sell Ink and Printers back in the Cobh days between 2014 - 2017 and also in the first year here in Millstreet.
We had a good bit more footfall over in Cobh but even then we ran into the typical situation, even while we had a good supply of common ink for most models, were people would call us to order a that one 'unusual' type of ink that we got in just for them (with little hope to find another customer with a Kodak printer or that specific model that only takes that ver model of cartridge) for the next day, only to hear when we call the customer back for the collection, that they actually got already sorted in TESCO or Amazon.
In order to understand what this means to a small business when this happens, here a bit more inside...
In order to be competative with other shops or even online sources you make about €0.50-€1.50 per cartridge.
However to fill even a small wall, with only the most common ink types for most commonly used models, you pay about €600-€800.
The ink has a sell by date, similar to your loaf of bread, as mentioned above the ink will dry up and clog the nossle.
So if you don't sell the ink within that time you have to write it off as a loss to the company.
Our loss in total on inks ordered but never collected was in fact reaching sever hundred € each year, while we offered it, or about 1 in 5 orders.
Here in Millstreet we have obviously way less customers then we had in Cobh, so I decided that we had to stop it as was no longer a feasable income stream, especially not for these margins.
So I when I heard back in the Day that Vinny's in Kanturk started to offer ink in last bid to save themselves, I knew they were doomed in that moment. The margins are simply not existent and the problems are much the same.
The concept of selling ink makes only sense either if you are specialized shop, like many of these print shops
>which we are not
Our core business is building custom PCs for your office, business & gamers. We repair and upgradeWindows-based desktop PCs and laptops. We offer the latest PChardware and accessorieson our online shop. Our Suppliers KOSATEC Empowering Global Innovation GmbH (Distributor)Reichelt.com (Sande, Germany...
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