To go on line and find the best possible price for ink and toner or to buy from a reputable local dealer is a question that is being asked more & more by indiviuals and businesses alike. So what is the right answer? It really depends on what you are looking for and what you can live with or without as far as service goes.

Let’s start strictly with price, well on line you can find a cheaper price for anything on this planet, period. That’s not even a debatable point. But let’s look at what you get for that rock bottom price when your buying ink or toner cartridges. How’s the quality? Well if your buying an OEM (original equipment manufacturer) product, the quality is the best, your buying what the manufacturer is producing. It’s like going to a big box store and buying an HP, Lexmark, Canon or any other name brand product, same quality and many times you will get a better price with an online vendor. How can that be? Because many of the online stores don’t have the kind of overhead the large brick & motor stores have.

But how about quality if your buying a compatible? Oh boy, here’s where it get’s tricky. The quality varies from excellent to down right trash. How do you know what’s good and what’s not?  You really don’t have any way of knowing untill you put it in your machine and try it. If it works, you got a winner, keep buying from that source. If it doesn’t work, here’s where you will find out the diffrence between buying on line and buying from a local supplier like Ink & Toner Solutions. If you take the time to read the return policy on the on line vendors, which most people don’t, you might be surprised by what you find. Let’s look at a typical on line refund policy, we reviewed a number of them and the return policy were all basically the same.

They state that they will gladly send you a replacement cartridges if there is a problem and they can’t fix it over the phone, problem is they won’t won’t ship out the replacement until they receive the defective one. So this means you have to pack it up & ship it out at your cost, once they get it they have to process it and then ship out a replacement to you. Time involved? Longer than most people can wait. If you want a refund or exchange for whatever reason they will be happy to help you as long as the product is unopened, the box has not been damaged and none of the seals are broken, if any of these conditions exist, they can’t accept the product for a refund or exchange. I would say there are many times you will have opened a box before realizing you have the wrong cartridge or it is defective, we see this all the time at our retail center.

Now, to get the process rolling when you buy from an on line vendor, a typical series of steps you will need to take is as follows, you have to log on to their site, get on your account, search for your item under Order History, create  a return request under Order Details then after the request is made you will receive via e-mail your RMA (Return Merchandise Authorization) number. Wow, I’m already tired! But wait there’s more, your return will be processed in 7-10 business day’s after the product has arrived at the vendors location. Think about this one for a minute. So you have a defect or the cartridge is the wrong one and you need another one, you don’t have a backup and you are running a small business. By the time you pack and ship it, it will take any where from 2 to 5 day’s to get to the destination depending on where the vendor is located, then wait the 7-10 business day’s for them to process the RMA and then they will ship the replacement back to you. By the time you get your replacement cartridge back, you have most likely been without a printer for about 2 weeks, what a deal. The requirement’s keep going, these are just the highlights, but I think you get my drift.

Now what do you get when you order locally from Ink & Toner Solutions? Very simple, you call us and tell us you have a defect or you ordered the wrong cartridge by mistake or you ordered correctly and we made a mistake or your printer died and you would like to return the toner you ordered and get a store credit, or just about anything else, well you get a replacement toner usally the next day shipped or hand delivered right to your location. After we make sure you have your replacement cartridge and your printer is up and running then we deal with getting the defect back. That’s it, we understand that most business’s and indivuals can’t wait 2 weeks to start printing again, so our focus is to make sure your up and running again as soon as possible, period. Try getting an on line vendor doing that for you.