Hi there,

We use to have a home made candle business a few years ago. Along with scented candles we sold oil by the bottle. Well, there are two kinds of oil on the market. You have fragrance oils and Essential oils. Fragrance oils are nothing but an oil base with a fragrant scent added to it and were about $15-$45/pound wholesale. Essential oils are a pure extract from a plant and were about $65-$120/pound wholesale. When a customer wanted to know why our Essential oil prices were so much higher than others on the market, we explained the difference to them. Well, there were many that thought we were just full of it. However, there was a proof positive way to test if what they were getting from the other sellers was Essential oil or not . It was simple, just take a sheet of white paper and using a dropper, put a single drop of your oil on the paper and let it evaporate. When it was all gone and if the oil you got was pure Essential oil, there will be no oil residue left to see on paper. If they sold you fragrance oil as Essential oil, the when it was all gone you will see and oil stain left on the paper. We had many customers come back to say they were sold fragrance oil and not Essential oil, hence their very low price.

Now with all that being said, and some of you are wondering where this is going I'm sure, is there a simple test that a customer can do to tell if they are being sold cartridges with dye ink instead of pigment ink?

Sorry for the long story but wanted to convey my question properly and why I asked,
Fred