Don't Gamble With Toner

I was looking around online at “refilled” cartridges this morning. In this economy it’s easy to look for the cheapest toner cartridge to do your printing. However, you often get what you pay for. If you are looking at “refilled” cartridges, what you are probably going to get are what we in the industry call “drill and fill.” They are pretty much exactly what they sound like.

With the “drill and fill” method, a hole is drilled into a common cartridge (like the HP Q1338A, Q1339A, Q5942X, or the Q5945A). Dry toner powder is then poured in the drilled hole (often drilled or melted), and the hole gets patched up with a rubber plug. This method is NOT recommended.

First, the chances of getting plastic shavings in your toner are are very high.

Second, the toner available online is NOT the same as the manufacturer’s toner (generally far inferior).

Third, if the plug comes out, it will damage your machine and create a huge mess!

Fourth, if your cartridge does explode, it is not covered under warranty, and you are going to either lose every penny you saved by having your printer cleaned and/or replaced.

Fifth, If you do “drill and fill,” the components of the cartridge, may last for one “fill,” but after more than once, print quality will suffer noticeably.

So, the basic theme here is this: if you are looking for a cheaper way to print, make sure it is with a cartridge that has unused quality parts, quality toner, and a good warranty. Gambling on a cheap cartridge is about like betting at a casino…over the long haul, you just won’t win. Call us at Pahoda Image Products with your printing needs!

Inkjet Cartridges: Why You Should Buy Compatibles

I recently received a request for a quote on inkjet cartridges. It surprised me a little because most of our printing quotes are for larger machines’ toner cartridges. I had to look around our supplier list for a quality manufacturer who made inkjets AND had a good warranty. The research paid off, and we found one with one of the best track records and best warranty in the business (3 years from date of manufacture). Most interestingly, they carried some very common HP DeskJet cartridges, HP Photosmart cartridges, and Officejet cartridges.

Some of the most common smaller cartridges: the 5162A (#26), the51629A (#28), 51645A (#45), and 51649A (#49) were so much less expensive, and the warranty so much better. While OEM cartridges are easy to purchase, it makes financial sense to switch to well-made compatibles with a good warranty. The savings for the small desktop printer make even more sense when you look at how much printing a desktop printer should be doing! Like I mentioned in the last article, most printing should be done at the much less expensive (per page) workhorse printers in a central area. Desktop printers are best for the home, or as an auxiliary printer that is rarely used.

If it is rarely used, the importance of a warranty becomes very important. The lenght of the warranty (90 days for most OEM cartridges), becomes important if you are only printing a couple pages each day. If you’ve tried returning a cartridge 6 months after you bought it, you already know what I’m talking about! I highly recomend looking at compatibles for your desktop printers if you haven’t already. Look for price, quality, and warranty. If it fails on any of these levels, keep looking. Feel free to give us a call for a quote on your desktop’s injet cartridge.

Toner Phoners: Watch Your Wallets!

I was talking to an IT director yesterday, and she gave me a good idea for a blog post: Toner Phoners. The scam has been around for a while, and the severity of what it can do to your wallet depends on how horrible of people you’re dealing with. Letting your office people (especially new hires) know about it is extremely important. The details may vary, but the basic formula is something like this:

Toner Phoner: “Hey, this is Bob over at _______ Office products, and we’re getting ready to ship out your order, I was wondering if you could read the model number of your office printer to me again. I just want to double check we have the right stuff in your order.”

New Office Person: “Oh, um, yep we’ve got a Xerox Phaser 8860 at our printing center.”

Toner Phoner: “OK, we’ll get that toner you ordered sent right over.”

The company will then be sent a bunch of sub-standard compatibles at exorbitant rates. If you are the victim, DO NOT use the products! They are normally incredibly cheap, and if one leaks in your printer, they are not under warranty, so you just got soaked for toner and a printer. If you are familiar with toner cartridges, you can usually tell how quality a cartridge is by its weight: cheap cartridges will be much lighter due to the lack of toner in them. If you are the victim of a toner phoner, look at the government’s site to help you know your rights: FTC.gov/boss

Like I’ve said before, if you are going to use compatibles, make sure they are under warranty, and don’t overbuy (as returning old toner can be a hassle). Buy from local companies with people you know and trust. Give us a call with your toner needs!

Is Your Toner Provider Driving With a Spare Tire?

Yep, time for a shameless business plug while still providing you with some useful info! If you’ve been buying compatible toner cartridges from a local retailer for more than a couple years, chances are you’ve had a bad cartridge. It’s like dating; you can only go on so many before you have a couple bad ones. If your retailer only has one supplier, you may be the one who bears the brunt of their decision.

Suppliers like being the only one for a retailer (see the HP-Staples article). However, if there is a problem with a shipment of cartridges, you can be left without toner until the defective cartridges are shipped back and the new ones arrive. Fortunately, all except the very cheapest (which should be avoided like Swine Flue) have good warranties, so any damage to your machine will be taken care of quickly. However, time can be lost…especially if your supplier doesn’t have access to compatibles from another supplier. If your reps are really dedicated and care about their reputation, they may cut into next months profit and purchase an OEM cartridge and deliver it personally to keep you happy. If this describes the service you get, you probably have a very good rep, or you’re overpaying, and they don’t want lose your account!

Before signing up for a long-term contract or even purchasing a trial cartridge, make sure your toner retailer has at least two suppliers. This assures that he’s getting compeditive pricing, and therefore, so are you! Feel free to check out our price list and give us a call with your questions.

Why You Shouldn't Buy a Years Worth of Toner!

A company selling toner isn’t supposed to tell you not to buy lots of toner, but we feel it’s more important that you are smart with your toner purchases than us making a ton of money off of you. So, in this article, I thought I would go over some reasons why you should not have a years worth of toner on your shelves.

When we go into a company, it is pretty normal for us to see about $2,000 worth of toner just sitting on the shelf and about 20% of the toner is for printers the company no longer even has! So, here are some of the best reasons to avoid overstocking the shelves with toner cartridges…

1) Next day delivery is almost always available for the common laser printers on the market. If you are networked, you may lose a day of being able to use the printer, but you’ll never be that long with out toner.

2) Warranty concerns — Most manufacturers only give a 90 day warranty on consumable items. It is very likely that if there is a defective on your shelf, you won’t be seeing a refund.

3) Internal tools in printer — Most printers can send an E mail to your admin if you set it up properly so that it can send an E mail when you hit 5% or 10% of your cartridge.

4) You normally have a few days of toner left when it runs out if you shake the cartridge. This can buy you time while the next one is arriving.

5) Printers break — If your printer breaks and you decide to replace it, do you really want $700 worth of toner just sitting on the shelf not able to be used?

Those are the best reasons not to stock the shelves with a bunch of toner. I would keep a 30 day stock for the concerns people have about not running out. I would not stock more than a 30 day supply!

Please contact us for your toner needs in the Denver Metro area!

Does Buying a Compatible Toner Void My Warranty?

There are lots of people out there that believe that if they bought compatible toner cartridges here in Denver, they’d lose their printer warranty in the process. There are some interesting things that happen as people have these beliefs. The most interesting is that people will continue to buy the compatibles even AFTER their manufacturer’s warranty expires… I guess we don’t like change. Here is the long and the short of it. According to the Sherman Moss act, a manufacturer cannot FORCE you to buy their supplies by threatening a warranty will go away if you use a compatible. Here’s the catch though…

A manufacturer does not have to warranty repairs that become necessary as a result of a defective compatible cartridge. So, for instance, if you were to purchase a cartridge from XYZ company and it blew up in the printer (toner bombed)… the printer manufacturer is not obligated to clean or fix any damage caused by using non-OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) toner. What you would want to have is the printer warranty PLUS a warranty from the toner provider that if their toners caused problems, they’d fix the problems it caused. This way you are covered either way!

Buying a good quality compatible is also important as it will alleviate many of these headaches due to the higher attention to detail and manufacturing standards at the toner factory. You will want to avoid the “drill and fill” types of cartridges at all costs!