So it’s time to buy a new printer. The one you have at home or office has either bitten the dust or you just want to upgrade, sounds simple enough, right? Wrong. I’ve been in the business of selling ink jet & toner products now for over five years and a week doesn’t go by that a customer comes in to our store or calls us and ask what printer would you recommend for me. Or a customer goes to a big box store and is confronted with a multitude of small & large printers, ink jet and laser jet’s without having a clear idea of what they need for their unique printing needs. Enter the store sales associate. Most of the time because these people are not printer experts they do not ask the customer the right questions but rather show them all the bells & whistles of the newest printers they carry. No one ever ask the question, what is the replacement cost of the ink or toner for this machine?

I once had a customer come to my store that got a great deal at Staples for an HP color laser jet on sale for under $200.00! Great buy, right? Well let’s look at the cost of the cartridges. This was a color Laser Jet so we have four cartridges, black, cyan, magenta and yellow. Cost for the OEM (Original Equipment Manufacture’s) toners, just about $225.00 each! So to load this baby up would cost the customer somewhere in the neighbor of $900.00. My business specializes in using eco-friendly remanufactured cartridges at great savings, so the cost for the remanufactured was $145.00 each, still a $580 bill. The customer could not afford to load the machine.

I asked him the right questions like do you need color, how many pages do you print a month, do you need to do double-sided printed, do you need this printer to do photos, what is you budget? He owned a small business he ran out of his house, printed up his invoices that has no color on them, printed about 800 to 1000 sheets a month and never did double-sided printed. It was more than obvious that no one had asked him these questions but were more interested in making a sale without the needs of the customer being taken into consideration. He had just bought the printer the month before so he returned it immediately. He went on-line and purchased what we advised him would work for his printing needs. Cost of the recommended printer was still under $200.00 but the cost of the replacement toner was $135.00 and only needed one, the black.

So next time you are in the market for a new printer, give us a call and we will ask the right questions and steer you in the right direction. We don’t sell printers so we have no reason to steer you in any one direction. We service printers when they need some TLC and sell the sensible eco-friendly re-manufactured supplies to help you save money, check us out.