Confused by Canon Ink Purchase

[rpcrowe]

I needed a Canon Pixma 251 GY (gray) ink cartridge for my Canon 8720 printer and ordered one from Amazon for $12.99 (USD). An hour or two later, I realized that I should have purchased an extra 251 GY ink cartridge and went back to Amazon and purchased another for the same amount ($12.99 USD).

When I received the order from Amazon, the box contained one cartridge packaged like this:


It also contained a separate bundle of four 251 CY gray ink cartridges, wrapped in plastic...


These cartridges are identified as "Genuine Canon Products"...



I have no complaints about receiving four cartridges for the price of one but, wonder if these are genuine of counterfeit? I use only genuine Canon ink for the printer since I print very seldom and experience has told me that the genuine Canon ink doesn't clog up!

[DanK]

Hard to know. Including multifunction printers, I've had lots of Canon printers, and I've never received four boxes of ink wrapped in plastic like that, and I've never received any at 1/4 the price, but that's no proof. Canon has published warnings abount counterfeit products recently, but that's not to say that these are fake. Maybe you just got a good deal, or Amazon made a mistake.

I've received counterfeit goods from Amazon, and I've read many reports of this. Some people say that it's safe if it's actually sold by Amazon rather than another vendor, but I've also heard that if Amazon's own stock runs out, they will sometimes fill the order from another vendor's supply. Who knows? Amazon isn't exactly transparent about what they do.

For this reason, there are a lot of things I don't buy from Amazon anymore. I don't buy my inks from them. I buy them from B&H instead. That means paying for shipping if the order is small, but I'd rather do that than take a risk.

If you find any tell-tale difference, please post about it.

[Manfred M]

Richard - OEM inks are rarely discounted and to get some at 1/4 of the price one would normally expect to pay suggests something is amiss. I would check the "best before" date on the package to see if you have purchased expired inks, otherwise I suspect this is not a genuine product. Ink manufacturers do not deeply discount their cash cow products...

As the old saying goes; "if it looks too good to be true, it probably is".

[Dave Humphries]

A few years back I received a dodgy "genuine Canon" battery for my S100 from Amazon.

With a battery, the biggest clue was the weight difference between the one supplied with camera and the one sold to me, which (from memory) was only about half the weight of the real one. It didn't have the same capacity either, of course.

I contacted Canon to obtain guidance on identifying fakes and eventually, after presenting all the evidence, got a refund from Amazon when I returned it.