Print cartridges leave a mark-up

SOUNDING OFF: Ripped off? Stunned by good value? Write, blog or text your experience to us

Ray O'Connor from Salthill owns an Epson R300 colour photo printer. It takes a pack of six print cartridges and, in his local PC World, a six-pack of Epson branded cartridges costs €70.99, "while the best price for the pack of refills, having priced them in a few different places in Galway, is €64," he writes.

"However, shopping around on Amazon I'm amazed, even gobsmacked, to see the price for a pack of six non-branded cartridges is £6.99! Even allowing for conversion to the euro that's still less than €10."

He decided to go with the Epson cartridges on the site; a twin-pack costs £28.80, which comes to about €36.50 compared with €141 if he had bought a twin-pack in PC World in Galway. "Is it any wonder we would buy abroad?" he wonders.

To try to find out more about the price discrepancies, we got in touch with Frank Walsh of Ink Maestro, a company which claims to offer the best value in printer inks in the country. He told us there were a couple of things to note about O'Connor's observations.

He said merchant mark-up on originals "is normally quite low, believe it or not" and said that "Epson, in common with all the manufacturers, make next to nothing on the hardware, but make truckloads on the consumables, literally thousands of per cent."

He says they justify it by saying the hardware cost millions to develop, "but that's disingenuous, as often a new printer either shares functionality with other ones already developed, or is a re-hash with some small added functionality.

"To a company like Epson, the price of a cartridge and the few dozen ml of ink inside - if even that much - can be measured in cents instead of euro."

He says that the Amazon price of £6.99 is unusually low "and, to be honest, eBay prices don't really mean a whole lot. There are always amazing 'bargains' to be had on eBay. The seller could be just trying to offload excess stock etc."

He says, typically, UK prices range from €48 to €82 for the genuine Epson six-pack and around €20 to €31.75 for the compatibles and said our reader's price spot looked "overly keen to me".

He said his company did not sell refills for our reader's printer. "What we do have are new compatibles, each with 23 per cent more ink than the originals, and we have the six-pack on sale at €30 including VAT."

Don't write them off

Michael O'Malley's claim on last week's page that cheques were "an absurdly old-fashioned way to move money" which "hardly anyone in Europe uses" has been stoutly rejected by a number of readers.

First up was David Nisbet who said that Ireland and England "are not the only countries where cheques are still frequently used. I have seen them used in French supermarkets and other retail outlets for quite small amounts.

"There is, as yet, no alternative, convenient way to send money to friends and relatives, or to make donations if one does not wish to divulge credit card details."

Then there was Hazel, who is in the process of redecorating a house. She says she would be lost without her chequebook to pay tradesmen.

"The only other alternative would be to carry around a lot of cash. Cheques have their uses, though I use a ballpoint, not a quill, to sign!"

And Gerry McDonnell would like an explanation as to "how you give a grandchild a monetary present electronically?"

More baggage

Following on from last week's short piece about EasyJet's prompt response to a passenger's broken bags, we have two more good news stories and both involve Ryanair.

Olga Gill's mother travelled with the airline to Bristol last year. "On arrival her suitcase was damaged. Unlike the person mentioned in the article who had to wait until he returned home to have his bag replaced, she had a new case delivered to her holiday address within two days. Ryanair gets a lot of bad press - some may be warranted, but not on this occasion," she says.

This was followed by a very rare mail in praise of Ryanair and their damaged bag policy. Aoife Shortt Ryan writes that the airline "tore a case of mine which I reported immediately and they replaced it within three weeks with a like-for-like! I had far more hassle with Air France in a similar situation."