Essential for every home and office are reliable printers that provide clear and high-quality outputs. There’s just no excuse for accepting any less; printing reports, presentations, charts graphs and any other detail oriented output for work require clarity. And for homes, printing school assignments and vibrant projects only affirm the need for quality home printers.
Unfortunately, proliferating in the market are fake products and supplies that include counterfeit inks and toners that get in the way of producing high quality prints. There are a large number of documented cases of complications due to the use of these which range from a decrease in printer efficiency to fully or partially damaged printers that incur additional costs. It’s better to be safe than sorry, and in most cases, it’s best to stay away from these. However, according to HP, a large number of consumers are still unaware of a definite way of determining these counterfeit products.
HP is very well aware of this concern, and has come up with a simple yet reliable way to help users distinguish original HP Inks and Toners from fake ones. The four-step procedure includes: mobile authentication, tamper-evident label check, security seal check, and online validation. Here is the guide:
Mobile Authentication
The first and easiest step is to simply scan the QR code of your HP product. Doing so from your smartphone or any camera-enabled smart device will validate the authenticity of your HP product.
Tamper-Evident Label
Look. Inspect. Check. If there are any signs of tampering, then it’s best to avoid it. Three things to spot in counterfeit cartridges are: unmatched pattern lines, a label that is colored rather than transparent, and text changes on the label that show ‘seal is void’. If you spot even just one of these three, purchasing it wouldn’t be a good idea.
Checking the Security Seal
In order to check for the security seal, simply tilt the box front to back to show that the labels “OK” and “√” move in opposite directions. Tilting the box from left to right should show “OK” and “√” moving in the same direction. If the movement is as follows, then it’s most likely legitimate. Additionally, the seal comes with an anti-counterfeit (ACF) number for validation.
Online Validation
For online validation, simply visit hp.com/go/ok and enter the ACF number found in the security label
HP’s four-step procedure simplifies counterfeit checking of HP products. For consistent high quality printed outputs, it’s always best to use only genuine and high quality HP products.