We 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.