PIXMA TR8620a guzzling ink even before printing

[joFlower]

I am on my third set of ink in 4 weeks - I seem to be getting half as many pages as before.  Have not even printed a single page on a new Cyan cartridge and it is already down 10%. Is this shrinkflation?  I have spent over $250 on ink this month.   No I am not printing more pages than normal.  Cartridges used to last 3-4 weeks, now barely making it to 2 weeks.

[JayC1]

Hi JoFlower,

Thank you for contributing to the community. I am sorry to hear about the amount of ink your printer has used in the last month. Unfortunately, (since you mention that the cyan ink dropping 10 percent with no printing) I believe you are dealing with a printer issue. There is no setting on the printer or in the software that would cause the printer to use that much ink.

If it was a settings issue, I would recommend that you check the paper (media) type setting and the quality setting. The type should match the paper you are using, and the quality should be set to standard (or normal). There is nothing else to adjust. 

If you have not used the printer recently, it does use a little bit of ink to prime the print head before printing the first page in a job. It does this so that you do not end up with white lines on the first page. However, the amount of ink used for that is very little. 

The printer does do a deep cleaning upon turning on (if the power cable was previously disconnected or if there was a power outage). That does consume more ink. If you have been having a lot of power outages, that can cause the printer to do an excess amount of deep cleans. This will also happen if the printer's power cable is connected to a power strip and the switch on that strip is turned to the off position. 

If you do not believe that power losses have been causing the printer to consume more ink, I recommend contacting Canon and speaking with a technical support agent. They can look into your warranty or out-of-warranty options. You will need to create a Canon account and register the printer before calling support. You can do that on the following website:

https://myprofile.americas.canon.com/us/signin

Once the printer is registered, you can dial (toll-free) 1-800-652-2666 to reach Canon. Technical support representatives are available Monday through Friday from 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM Eastern Time (excluding holidays) 

Thanks again for posting your inquiry. 

[joFlower]

I have been using this printer daily since June of 2023.  I have been using a set of ink every 6 weeks like clockwork.

Suddenly, I am buying a full set EVERY WEEK now.  About to hit the $300 mark for the last 4 weeks.

I will get in touch with tech support, thank you.

[joFlower]

That was humiliating. I got called a liar and told that if reinstalling the drivers doesn't solve the problem, then there is nothing else they can do.  I opted to do the driver install myself instead of work with the rude tech support rep, since I am kinda technical.

[Stephen · Accepted solution]

I'm sorry to hear that you felt that the support agent was rude. This does sound like a hardware failure, especially if you've been using heavyweight paper daily for several years. This is a personal printer designed for home/home office use. Pushing it to extremes can cause it to act out of the ordinary and eventually fail. 

Make sure you have the current and official Canon Software and Drivers from https://canon.us/TR8620asetup 

If that doesn't solve the problem, it may be time to start looking into a printer designed for the heavyweight work you do - you'll be surprised how much smoother things go when you use the right tool for the job! Take a look at the printers we have that work great with heavy papers: https://canon.us/47zKioS 

[joFlower]

Thank you Stephen.  Yes I definitely got my money's worth out of it before this ink issue started.  It is weird, I have been doing the same thing for 10 years, and when the printer is failing, usually the print heads jam or the print quality suffers. You know, things that wear out start wearing out.

First time I have seen software wear out.

Personally, I think the Ink division has found a new way to raise revenue by reducing the amount of ink in each cartridge. I guess if that is true others will start to notice also.

[joFlower]

This issue is still not resolved. Here are screen shots of the ink usage on a pretty normal sample of 21 pages.  

Yellow and Black were loaded prior to starting the print job, while Cyan and Magenta were already in use.

the printer is doing a mini-cleaning every 5 pages when the print job exceed 5 pages.   I have screen shots every time the level changed if more detail would be helpful.  

Initial ink levels

at the end of 21 pages