I've been attempting to use Cross rollerballs for this -- in part because they offer purple and red as well as blue and black. However, lately I have found that these refills are beyond dreadful.  Dreadful -- as in they won't write consistently within five minutes of opening the package and installing the refill in the pen.  I know there are a lot of other rollerball options out there (indeed, I use many others).  But I can't believe how bad these refills have become.  Cross really ought to be ashamed to have these things on the market -- at least in my view. Anyone else seeing the same thing?

Different experience.....I have several Cross Rollerballs , all purchased within the last 6 months....Coincidentally, I commented to a colleague a couple of weeks about how impressed I was with the Cross Rollerballs...mine have never skipped, always started on the initial pen to paper....great vibrant colors...my rollerballs are in a couple of Townsends, and in a couple of the Cross X  Liberty United rollerballs.  I have Black, Blue and Purple refills.

I've found the black ones last forever, even with sporadic use.  However, the purple and the blue ones are next to worthless.  If I don't use it every day, they dry out almost immediately.

While I use my smartphone for many things, I still manage tasks the old fashioned way -- on paper in a notebook.  I find that the physical act of writing with a pen keeps things in my head better than typing them into a digital task manager.  I mostly use my fountain pens for this (various colors for different purposes), but I like to have a rollerball or two on hand for back-up in case a pen has dried a bit or is acting finicky.

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You might try taking a match or a lighter and heating up the roller ball barrel...I know I had to do that with some Private Reserve Refills a few years ago, as they were not starting and were skipping, or not writing at all....and it worked.

The joke, of course, is that all this obsessing is about pens I use for backup.  90% of the time, I use my fountain pens and I'm able to have all the ink colors I need readily available.

PS:  You might consider calling Cross and explaining the issue...I suppose there is a Warranty fo some sort, or if these were refills contact the retailer you purchased them from.

I can continue to use Cross's "porous point" refills in those rollerball/Selectip pens -- I have found them to be consistently good for decades -- though the only colors available are black and blue.

Schmidt makes short capless refills in black, blue, red and green -- I suspect the long capless refills are available in the same colors.  I use the short capless refills in a variety of pens -- probably most heavily in Retro 51 Tornados and BaronFig Scribe pens.

PS:  You might consider calling Cross and explaining the issue...I suppose there is a Warranty fo some sort, or if these were refills contact the retailer you purchased them from.

Purple is harder to come by, but not impossible.  Pilot and Pentel make gel refills in a wide range of colors and many of them fit pens that take "standard" international rollerball refills.

Lamy makes a good "standard" rollerball refill in red and green (as well as blue and black) and both work well.  (Their capless M-66 refills [for the Swift and Tipo lines] are also available in red and green in addition to blue and black.)