Having just returned from seeing one of my regular customers I felt I must add another name to the name and shame gallery, no not my customer, but Makro, the large cash and carry chain.

The story actually starts a fews weeks ago when I received a call from my customer asking for help in installing a new printer, now most printers are quite simplistic, run the installation CD plug in the USB cable and away you go, but not this one, oh no, this printer was a Canon bubble jet business printer bought from Makro, well that doesn’t sound too bad, but wait, there’s more, this printer was enormous, in fact it took over the desk it was placed on, I’d have to build an extension to fit it in my office! But the real shock were the instructions, in 2 languages I had no idea what they were! There was an extra instructions CD including other languages including English, but this would suggest the package wasn’t intended for the UK market, products for the UK should have english paper instructions or if only a CD is provided then the lead language should be english, and this wasn’t the case.

A good comparison would be going into a corner shop and buying a diet coke only to find out later you’ve got a coke light with some arabic writing on the can, you’ve still paid the ridiculous price knowing that the shop owner paid some cheap price from his friend bringing a van full back from abroad.

Well maybe its not the best comparison but you get my point, and its another one of my rants I feel strongly about.

But back to the story, the set up CD was in english and gave the option for network set up, my customer has 2 PC’s and a router, I set up the printer via USB an advised I’d return the following week with a patch cable to set it up for network use. On returning I was advised the supplied ink cartridges had run out, knowing that cartridges supplied with printers are never large capacity it was still shocking as his print load is very light, he searched online to buy replacement cartridges but could not find a company holding any stock, could this be an outdated printer model? He found a local company that could order the ink, if you’re not sitting down, do so now, the cost for 4 cartridges was £180, no I haven’t missed a decimal place, £180, 2 and a half times the price of the printer! And when looking for the network port to connect the printer, there wasn’t one! Just a USB connection, the software covered 2 models, the other being the network capable printer yet not clear within the installation.

Can you guess what my advise was? Thats right, take it back! I’ll soon be installing a new inkjet  printer with ink costs of no more than £30. 

So just remember when you’re looking to buy a new printer, its not just how good or nice it looks, do your research and check the size, make sure it’ll go where you plan for it to go, and check the price of inks and whether there are compatible ink cartridges available, that’ll save you some more money.

Also look out for the printers that take 2 ink cartridges, 1 colour and 1 black, if you run out of one colour then you have to replace the whole cartridge and they can be quite expensive, many printers now take 4 or 6 cartridges of individual colours, just replace the colour you’ve run out of.

And to those companies selling us cheap imports at normal prices, stop, the consumer only losers out when they can’t get the parts or spares.

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