Why not buy one decent pen “shell” and then just buy the plastic tube with the tip and the ink afterwards?
I know many companies use pens for marketing but still, they could apply this too and also stand up for the environment while still do marketing.
I had a Monteverde retractable rollerball I absolutely loved which was well-suited to writing through carbon forms.
Like most things, many people don’t want to be inconvenienced with the ritual of refilling their pens; a ritual many fountain pen owners actually enjoy; they don’t care about the granular control over color. Blue is blue. Black is black. But for us, a particular shade of cornflower blue is what brings us joy.
Good points!
Many FP lovers refill from bottles, but it isn’t necessary. Cartridges are easy to use, well-suited for travel when you may run dry in the middle of a trip, and TSA doesn’t give you grief about them.
Again, my point to OP was that there’s very little practical advantage to ball points over fountain pens; if you’re using cartridges, they’re not much better for the environment, but you can do things like use a converter most of the time and carry cartridges as back-up. Fountain pens are fantastic writing implements.