HP Recalls Fax 1010 and 1010xi

Due to a possible fire risk, HP has recalled the Fax 1010 and 1010xi machines that were manufactured in China and sold from November 2002 to December 2004, at a price of $130 to $150.

If you have one of these machines, here is the link for what to do and how to contact HP.

We encourage any of our readers or customers with these printers to turn them in.

New Products

Once again, it is time to update what are some of the new products at O-ink’s Website and our two stores.

First up – Pitney Bowes USPS Branded Postage Meter Cartridges – These are the official Pitney Bowes cartridges.  Now in stock and ready to ship.

Next – As mentioned in previous post, replacement cartridges for the new Kodak printers.

Next – HP 60XL cartridges.  O-ink does not sell the standard, as they are not economical.  Both the black and color are in-stock.

Finally – HP CB540 Series.  While we ranted about these in the past on the bad economics, we are still selling them.

Circuit City & Lexmark Printers – :-(

It seems Circuit City has become really smart with their printer sales.  They figured out that if you sell a printer where you can get the cartridge at any store, there isn’t much of a turn around.  However, if you sell printers that the only place you can get the cartridges is their store, they earn more money.

I first discussed this back in March (link is here), however, they have recently expanded the number of printers that they carry from Lexmark that CC is the only place to get the cartridges.  Besides the following printers, Lexmark X2480, X2580, X3480, X3580, X4580 and Z1480, CC has recently added the X2690 printer.  This printer takes the #4 Black and the #5 Color.

Compared to the other printers, at least with this one you can order the printer cartridges from Lexmark’s website.  However, they are currently not available at any other retail location.

Personally, since the printer is from Lexmark, I would not touch them with a ten foot pole.  If you need something cheap, look at HP.

Moderate Yield Ink, what is it?

I have been getting a lot of searches on “moderate yield ink levels”.  So I figured I would spell it out plain and simple.  It is a waste of money.

Lexmark is the most common company that does moderate yield cartridges.  Cartridges like the 17, 71, 49, 19, and 32  are only  half full cartridges.

Here are some numbers.  Lexmark 17 cost $21 for roughly 200 pages.  Lexmark 16, which is physically identical, cost $33 for 400 pages.  For 12 bucks more you get 200 more pages.  Same with the Lexmark 71 and 70, the 70 cost about $35 for 600 pages, while the 71 cost about $22 for 255 pages.

Bottomline, if you see moderate yield ink, don’t get it.  Get the High yield or Standard yield cartridge for your printer, it will save you money in the long run.

Price switching by Staples???

Let me start by saying I like shopping at Staples as well as using their website as a reference tool. Recently we started to do a price quote for a possible new customer. Looking over the quote at home, my wife said, we have to lower our prices on the TN360 and DR360 from Brother as Staples is cheaper than us. No big deal, sometimes we are cheaper, other times we aren’t. However, when I have set up the prices for those two cartridge, I know I was cheaper. So I hopped on my computer and pulled up Staples’ website

. After looking up the printer, I told my wife she was wrong, and here are the correct prices. 62.99 for the TN360 and 115.98 for the DR360. Well, any man who is married, knows what happens when you tell your wife she is wrong. I said it happens and left it at that.

So I come into work the next day to finish the quote and get it sent out. I pull up Staples website again to verify the prices, again. Well in less than 18 hours the prices have changed back to what my wife and put down, not what we saw last night. I thought that was strange. Now I usually run Firefox as my main browser, so for kicks and giggles, I started IE. Pulled up the same printer, and what do I get, well take a look.

Two different price points on the same products at Staples.

I do not know how we did this. I hope this isn’t something like the Best Buy Intranet scene from back. Now I know that each physical location can set their own prices on products, which usually are not inline with the website prices. However, with a difference like this, I wonder what the reason is.

Oh, and if incase you are wondering, here are O-ink’s everyday prices for everyone.

*Update* After doing some further research, it seems that only the Brother cartridges are affected by this.

Oil prices and cost of printer cartridges Part 2

This is a follow up post to my post at the beginning of May (here is the link). I have noticed some interesting things happening in the past month that I thought were a few months off.

1. Prices have already started to go up. I have checked two local Walmart’s and the prices for their cartridges have already gone up about 10% roughly. Now this is not a nation wide affect yet, but for our local Walmart’s the prices are staying.
2. More people are looking to save – We have seen our sales keep going up. Granted in May, June, and July we are usually slow, however, our slow down this year has not been the same as in years past. We are seeing higher traffic from people who want to try and save some cash.
3. The cartridge manufactures are starting to increase their prices. Here is an article from Kodak. With them increasing prices, that means that their black cartridge will increase by about $2 and color about $3 if the prices affect the cartridges. Their printers, which are mentioned in the article, will go up from $20 to $40.

We personally have seen small price increases in our OEM products, but not in our replacement and refilled products. In fact, as for the next 6 months, O-ink should not have to increase our replacement or refilled prices, of course barring a major increase in prices.

With that being said, I am going to change my outlook for the year. The prices will probably go up from 5-10% to 10-30% by years end.

Also, if you are looking for Kodak Cartridges, here is the link for our replacements.