Every now and again you get a customer ordering the incorrect cartridge and sometimes this is easy to do but now with updated websites and better search engines it is getting easier to order the correct cartridges and harder to order incorrectly.

The best way to find the cartridges for your printer is to know the full make and model of your printer and use the search box on a website to find your specific printer and most websites have the printer linked up to the correct cartridges for you, they’ll have a range of listing from remanufactured/compatible to the originals, different prices for different quantities etc. If you do not know your printer model number then it is advised to stick with the cartridges you have already installed in your printer and they usually have a sticker on top or the side with the number that cartridge is, for example a Canon CL-511 may have 511 on the top or CL511 and some colour dots. It will always have some indication as to which cartridge it is, if it does not we will always advise customers to consult their printer manual as it will state in there exactly which cartridges are compatible with their printer.

In the HP world of printers there are specific models which take HP364 and HP364XL. We find a high amount of customers order incorrectly when it comes to these cartridges as they don’t understand what XL means, they think this is a large size cartridge where as in fact it is the standard HP 364 but filled with a higher capacity of ink. Then there is the big BUT! Some of the printers take 4 of the HP 364 cartridges but others take 5 and it becomes confusing as altogether there is a black, magenta, cyan, yellow and photo black, so when customers simply search 364/ HP 364/ HP 364XL it brings up all 5 cartridges but what do customers do that only have 4? They order the 5 and cause more inconvenience for themselves. This then becomes a bigger issue as they wonder why they are receiving an error message stating the cartridge is missing or it is not fitting in correctly when placing the photo black in their printer which is NOT compatible.

Altogether the best way to search is to have some knowledge of your printer make and model and the number of the cartridges it takes.