When parts of Japan were devastated by a terrible earthquake a month ago, there seemed little doubt that the printer and supplies industry would be seriously impacted and there would be shortages of some key products. Now, according to an April 12 CRN article, it seems that the industry’s top vendor, HP, which is dependent on Canon for production of laser printers and MFPs and toner cartridges, has sent a letter to various partners indicating that it is concerned about the future availability of certain toner cartridges and LaserJet devices. According to the CRN story, HP has warned its partners that in response to potential shortages it is restricting distribution of some toner cartridges. According to an email that we received, there are several affected toner cartridges, listed in the table below.

HP has been experiencing shortages of the HP CE285A (or 85A) toner cartridge for months now, and just before the earthquake struck, we had heard that another SKU, the CE278A (or 78A), was in short supply (see “HP Toner Cartridge Shortage: It’s Not Over”). Canon had problems in ramping up production to meet demand for certain HP toner SKUs before the disaster in Japan, and now the firm obviously faces an even bigger challenge. Some of its manufacturing facilities have been offline for weeks, and transportation systems and other key infrastructure in Japan have been disrupted. Although more manufacturing facilities in Japan are coming back online, all it takes is a disruption somewhere in the supply chain, a shortage of a crucial component in a toner cartridge or laser printer, to impact Canon’s ability to manufacture finished SKUs. HP is obviously expecting to see some shortages and is taking the necessary steps to limit their impact by rationing distribution of some toner cartridges.

We have ample stock of remanufactured and compatible Hp toner cartridges. When the big box stores begin to run out of these supplies please give us a call (413) 517-0099

In our modern age of large sprawling retail box stores and major corporations taking over the landscape of independently owned and local businesses; it is even more crucial these days to consider keeping business local and to find alternatives to the national chains. Small and local businesses are the life blood of Middle America employing the majority of our citizens and having the most vested interests in our local communities. Our existence is threatened as larger corporate chains and box stores crowd the marketplace and force local businesses out of the market. We, the local business person, are the only ones who can take the power back and keep business local by supporting our neighbors and caring about how our money is spent. By keeping it local you ensure prosperity for our local community and for the future of our local economy.

Today, I am writing to you as a fellow local business owner, to have you consider my company as your partner in office imaging. We are one of the few independent office technology firms here in Western Massachusetts and have developed a healthy client list that includes over 650 local businesses, non profits and government entities. We are the true local alternative to big corporate chains and office supply companies because we are here to better serve your needs and by offering personalized service and an environmentally sustainable solution that is also much better for your bottom line.

Our business philosophy is as follows:

• Customized printer supply pricing guaranteed to save you 20-50%
• Environmentally friendly products that help reduce waste in our own country
• Free and fast product delivery to keep your business running
• Printer & copy machine repair, maintenance and service plans for worry free printing
• Printer parts, maintenance kits and expert knowledge and support
• New, used and refurbished printers & copy machines sold at competitive prices

I truly appreciate the opportunity to connect with your business and I look forward to assessing your needs and creating a plan to serve you better. Please contact me to get the process started so that I can put together a cost analysis for your office and to further examine the possibilities for your business.

Respectfully,

Karl Tur

Vice President

Ink & Toner Solutions

(413) 517-0099 x 4

If you begin seeing signs of poor quality or the printer showing a “maintenance needed” message you should have the issue handled as soon as possible. Most commercial grade laser printers need scheduled maintenance every 150,000-250,000 pages or sometimes sooner depending on manufacturers specifications. We sell maintenance kits for pretty much every printer model out on the market for a very competitive rate. These kits are required in order to keep the printer working at optimal levels and to avoid a breakdown. Most kits include a fuser unit and several feed and pickup rollers that are essential to your machine. Once you get the maintenance kit from us, usually in 1 business day, we will send one of our on site printer technicians to perform the installation and to do a routine cleaning of the printer. When a kit is installed and we look over the device to make sure there are no other issues with it. When done, you will have a piece of equipment that is good for another 250,000 pages.

If you need quick, reliable, laser printer service and you are located in the Western Massachusetts area including Springfield, Northampton, Holyoke, Greenfield or Westfield please call us at 413 517 0099 to schedule your service call. If you are a department at Umass Amherst, Amherst College or Mount Holyoke College, please give us a call as well. We have done work for numerous school and town departments. Let us help you take care of your office printing so that you can focus on your business and work. www.InkSolutionsma.com

Whether you are a small or large office operation, give us a call to set up a time to talk. We are local people and will only give you an honest answer and plan each and every time. We want to put together a plan that works for both parties and that helps increase efficiency within your office environment. The worst thing that will come out of it is a pleasant conversation and a chance to get to know another fellow local business person.

The big office store companies surely are campaigning about their low prices on TV and radio. You can bet on hearing one of their ads during the morning commute or seeing one of their ads run during your favorite sports event. They are claiming the lowest prices on printer ink and laser toner cartridges over anyone else. They say they will match anyone else’s prices for such items. But don’t be fooled.

In order to better serve our clients and growing customers base, we now have expanded our same day delivery service to cover multiple cities in Western Massachusetts. We can deliver your ink, laser toner or copy toner supplies within only a few hours once you place an order over the phone or by email. Same day service is available in Northampton, Holyoke, Springfield, West Springfield, Agawam, Chicopee, South Hadley and more cities within Hampshire and Hampden counties. Give us a call today to find out how soon you can get your supplies delivered and if we have your items in stock. Thousands of items are ready to go including Hp, Canon, Dell, Epson, Lexmark and Brother, so call ahead and let us help your day go a little smoother.  Not only can we get your products over to you fast- they are up to 50% less than the competition.

(ORIGINAL) LIST PRICE:  $7,235.00

OUR PRICE:  $2,995

FEATURES:

• 50 PAGE REVERSING DOCUMENT FEEDER
• 25 COPIES/PRINTS PER MINUTE
• SCAN UP TO 52 IMAGES PER MINUTE
• SCAN TO EMAIL, SCAN TO FILE
• NETWORK READY PRINTING, SCANNING
• COPY, PRINT, SCAN, UP TO 11” X 17”
• TWO SIDED COPYING, PRINTING, SCANNING
• FAXING
• 12 SECOND WARM-UP TIME
• UP TO 99 COPIES AT A TIME
• ELECTRONIC COLLATING
• TWO 500 SHEET DRAWERS, 100 SHEET BYPASS
• REDUCE/ENLARGE, 25%-400%, IN 1% INCREMENTS
• OFF LEASE MACHINE- ONLY HAS 100,000 PAGES PRINTED
• STAND INCLUDED
• 90 WARRANTY AND RETURN PERIOD- COVERED UNDER SERVICE PLAN THEREAFTER

INCLUDES:

- SET-UP, INSTALLATION AND TRAINING

- INSTALLATION ONTO EXISTING COMPUTER NETWORK

MAINTENANCE AGREEMENT PRICING:- $460.00/YEAR

• ANNUAL COPY LIMIT OF 32,000 COPIES
• INCLUDES ALL PARTS AND LABOR.
• INCLUDES TONER AND DEVELOPER.
• INCLUDES DRUMS
• UNLIMITED SAME DAY/NEXT DAY SERVICE CALLS.
• .012/COPY  OVERAGE RATE

I’m a firm believer that you don’t need to wait for the New Year in order to implement a new discipline or change in your life. If you want something different start today and make it happen. But since the impact of New Year’s resolutions is significant among people in our society, here are some suggestions for things you could do to improve your relationship with mother Earth. We all have a few things to work on and so here are a few easy ways to get yourself on the road to being more eco conscious. Happy New Year!

1. Use your bike for short trips- It takes a certain level of dedication to completely eliminate the use of your car but why not start small? Use your bike more often for short trips to the store, yoga class or to the post office. You will also fell physically better while reducing your carbon footprint.
2. Cut back on paper towel usage-3,000 tons of paper towels end up in the landfill each and every day. Take a small step today by using sponges or cloth towels to wipe your home clean. They can be reused several times and can be sanitized over and over again thus reducing the need to buy more material and add to the landfill problem within our nations borders.
3. Use reusable grocery bags- Oh man! You forgot your reusable bag once again and now are having the bagger at the store use plastic for your groceries. It does happen, you meant to but forgot. Try to keep a few bags in your car; somewhere visible and easy to remember. Keeping them buried in the closet at home is probably not the best idea…after all about 1 million bags end up in the landfill every minute.
4. Never buy bottled water again- Simply carry a aluminum bottle or reusable container for your water or use a water dispenser at the office and eliminate unnecessary waste. Not to mention save a good chunk of money each year by making this eco friendly change in your life.
5. Brew fair trade coffee- Buying fair trade means you support farmers and makes sure they receive a reasonable rate for the product they sell. By using your own coffee mug or container you will save waste by not using a Styrofoam or paper cup. Try to also use organic or soy milk in your coffee.
6. Reduce phantom power- Even if you electronic devices are not being used and are plugged in they use electricity. This is costing you unnecessarily in your electric bill and is inefficient. Try plugging several devices into a power strip and simply shutting it off at night or if you will be at work all day. They even have automatic timers that you can use so this happen without thinking about it.
7. Buy local produce- Check out your local farmer’s market or visit a farm stand during the growing season. Supporting local farmer’s is the best way we can ensure a strong food production economy in our local region. Most often locally grown produce is more sustainably and organic than store bought produce. Learn more about community support agriculture.
8. Use recycle ink and laser cartridges- Yes cartridges are the small annoying things in life that always run out when you have something important to print out. But the are important to consider in your household and in the office as a single cartridge can use up to an ounce of crude oil to build. Try finding a printer supply company that can sell you OEM alternative remanufactured cartridges that reuse the outer shell of an original cartridge, thus saving lots of plastic and in most cases 20-50% of your own money.

• The owner was joking and laughing with his customers. This set a positive tone and everyone was in a great mood
• He cared and took the time to explain things to us and basically let us go anywhere on the farm to choose the tree we like without restrictions.
• I was pleasantly surprised when he told me about his tree guarantee: He guarantees the health and longevity of the trees you purchase from him. If you are not happy with the purchase and if the tree dies early he will refund your money and give you a free tree!  This is a policy that I have never heard of in this industry and I was very impressed by this.
• Not only does he have an exceptional policy, he also gave us some tips about caring for our tree during the holidays. He also gave us a tree care package that includes plant food that extends the life of Christmas trees.
• We were given some candy and a recycling bag for when the tree needs to be thrown out after the holidays

What a great value! We paid $30 and were very happy with what we received. Maybe it is not the lowest price in the area but surely it is the greatest value around.

We ended up enduring the cold wind and managed to have fun finding our own tree. The owner of the farm helped create a great customer experience and I highly recommend visiting his farm for your Christmas tree this year. If you are local, visit Four Corners Farm in Williamsburg MA. I appreciate the way they conduct business and this is the way we do business at Ink & Toner Solutions. If this is the type of customer experience you are  looking for in a printer supply vendor; look no further.

HP has been referred to the Federal Trade Commission over claims about its ink yield compared to third party ink, made in various advertising campaigns and on product labels.

The contested claims include the page yield included on several HP colour ink cartridges, as well as the representation of claims that it offers 65 percent more ink than competitors.

The National Advertising Division (NAD) of the Council for Better Business Bureaus initially investigated the claims after rival OEM Kodak challenged them.

The situation is something of a role-reversal as Kodak itself recently had an ad campaign centred on cost saving banned, after HP complained to the Advertising Standards Agency. Both OEMs took out major advertising campaigns during the recession to promote the value for money of their cartridges, and have since seen their claims disputed.

The disputed HP claims include the page yields for the HP 564, HP 920, HP 901 and HP 60 CMY ink cartridges, and HP 901 and HP 60 black cartridges.

NAD reviewed the evidence and decided that HP had not provided “sufficiently reliable” basis for the page yield claims. It suggested that the OEM discontinue the claims, as well as switching to report the minimum or range yield of all tested printers.

It also suggested the company discontinue claims that “ The #1 Ink Brand is the #1 Value”, which it believed was aimed specifically at third party competitors.

It also determined that a short TV ad using cartoon peacock graphics to display HP’s ink yield against “bargain inks” was misleading, though did not question the validity of HP’s claim to provide 65 percent more ink.

However, HP rejected NAD’s conclusions, having apparently taken issue with several of the findings. As a result, NAD has passed its findings on to the FTC for further review.