sublimation ink shelf life

[Charlie_]

Taken note of some interesting comments on this....

[JSR]

I guess one question to think about is (i) how long has Sawgrass had the ink sitting on their shelves before they date it, and (ii) how long do resellers have the bottles on their shelves before they sell it? We don't know if we're getting 8-year old ink when we buy it.

With Sawgrass putting dates on the ink now, does that means resellers can expect to get the ink sent back to them if there's not a long enough date on it? I wouldn't want to buy ink in from an "authorised reseller of Sawgrass ink" only to find that it has just one month of usable life left on it. I'd want to be able to send it back and expect a replacement with at least a year's life on it.

Or is the date code something encrypted that we, the end user, can't decypher? We think it's new but, when we ask Sawgrass for support and read them the date code, they could say "sorry, that expired three months ago - no support for you, m'laddo!"

Seems like a minefield of obfuscation to me.