Is this an age gap situation? What you're describing as difficult used to be the norm. You could go to the print shop with a cartridge and they'd fill it with whatever they had for a reasonable price. No one had to support third party cartridges (you'd refill the first party cartridges and third party cartridges were designed to be compatible). It was a perfectly acceptable system for everyone except the manufacturers, who weren't happy with consumers that would buy loss leader printers and skip the ink.
