tonersinksWe have been asked to do a little research on the price of toners from various consumable suppliers, as people thought that they were paying a little too much for the toner or ink cartridges.

In my opinion, I think a lot of consumers pay too high a price for the ink and toner for their office printers, simply because the convenience of one stop consumable stores.

I would have liked to have given the name of each supplier, but would imagine that I would be lynched. Below are the prices from 9 suppliers based in Gauteng and KwaZulu Natal. These prices were for the original manufacturer cartridges, and excluded VAT and delivery.

Supplier
Cartridge A B C D E F G H I
Q7551A 1240 1289 1810 1404 1371 1350 1250 1351 1364
CC364A 1575 1594 1653 1764 1794 1770 1699 1847 1860
Q7551X 2086 2277 1739 2100 2525 2272 2499 2206 2295
C9385AN – blk 176 209 368 192 184 181 169 181 198
C9386AN – c 133 170 285 143 138 136 139 136 150
C9387AN – m 133 170 285 143 138 137 139 137 168
C9388AN – y 133 170 285 143 138 138 169 138 150
ML-2010D3 639 649 964 643 650 751 690 705 640

What I found interesting was the fact that the most expensive supplier was the most well known and well used consumable suppliers in the country. So my advice is to definitely shop around for better pricing, on one particular cartridge they were R406 more expensive than the next closest price.

A good few suppliers offered us remanufactured or third party cartridges, which were substantially cheaper. The down side to these are simply that they are messier, and often not as reliable as the originals – but they do work, and they save a lot of money. However, please ask for a reference of another law firm that are using them, and make very sure you call them before using third party toners.

In fact if you know of a source to good prices, or good quality toners/inks, why not post a comment to the forum, or just email me, and I will post it for you – let us help each other in building a good buying referral system within Tech4Law.

Have a look at our previous articles on saving toner – Squeeze 10% more out of your toner cartridges and Saving on printing cost.

We will post the supplier details on the “Suppliers Listing“, but will omit the one that seems to rob the consumer.

Comments very welcome.

Note: I think that supplier C had the pricing on the Q7551X wrong, but they insisted they were correct, so I have left the pricing as per their quotation.

 

 

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