Ink and Toner: Common Things to Know

If your office primarily deals with the upkeep of ink or toner, it's important to know that both come with their own set of challenges and benefits. Regardless of which option you choose, properly caring for the cartridges will help ensure the longevity of both the cartridges and your printer. In this blog, we will help you increase your knowledge of both ink and toner that can be valuable when it comes to office productivity and saving costs.

Toner Recycling/Disposal

A common question we get weekly in our department focuses on what our customers can do to recycle and/or dispose of their toners. We partner with a company that specializes in making sure these items get to the correct place called “Responsible Recycling.” Once you have a total of six empty toners (these can be any brand…Kyocera, Lexmark, HP, Brother, Dell, etc.), you submit a request through your account on the website, and they will email you a prepaid label to send them in. If you place an order for toner and need a box to recycle some toners on site, do not hesitate to let us know in the supply department to get you one to use.

Reminder to our Kyocera customers, the toners/toner tubes are 100% plastic and can be put in your local recycling as an option as well. Thanks for “toning” in!

OEM versus Remanufactured Toner/Ink

Using buzz words such as “OEM” and “Reman” toner and ink is common in the supply world but there are some misconceptions about all the options available. OEM is short of “Original Equipment Manufacturer” and when talking about the toner/ink world, the best example would be purchasing HP brand toner for your HP printer. These supplies are designed and created by HP. “Reman” is short for Remanufactured and the majority of our customers use these cartridges in their printers. Sometimes we hear descriptions “generic” or “refilled” but the word I would use to describe them would be “re-engineered.” Tone into the next blog to explain how our remanufactured toner helps our customers!

Why use Remanufactured Toner

So why do most of our customers use Reman toner in their machines? The best answer is the cost savings associated with using them along with a reliable product. We partner with a vendor that works specifically with copier/printer vendors to create a product that meets or exceeds the performance of “OEM” supplies. They engineer the cartridges to be compatible with OEM equipment and rigorously test them to make sure they pass the necessary standards to be used in your machines. We 100% guarantee the cartridges in both quality and page yield.

These cartridges are also legally sold (please be aware of cheap imitations on the web…the reason they are so inexpensive is they are made illegally and with products that can endanger your staff) and can be recycled appropriately too. This partnership allows us to pass cost per page savings to our customers with a product that is reliable to keep your business running!

What to do with Unused Toner/Ink

“Help me, I have a bunch of unused supplies and don’t have those printers anymore…what can I do?” This another common question we encounter and definitely can help you out with. Let us first talk about supplies that are on “contract” with your vendor. These are toners that are covered under your service and supplies agreement and were not charged for those to be sent out. Therefore, contact your vendor you received your supplies from and should be able to take those back. If you are switching out a machine, let our Coordinated Team (delivery personnel, trainers, tech) working with you aware that you have some unused toner you won’t need and they can bring it back for you.

If you purchased toner/ink and do not have that printer anymore, contact the company you purchased them from to see your options. At Coordinated, any supplies ordered/purchased from us, we can take back if they are less than 1 year old and issue a credit if need. Watch out for some supply vendors, as they have only a 30-day return policy on toner/ink purchased through them and can make it very difficult for your business!

Can I Automate my Printer Fleet?

Great question and the answer is “we hope so!” With technology improving and getting better every day, there is an option for businesses to automate several printer-related items that can help free up their staff. To accomplish this, you would need to install a Data Collection Agent (DCA) on your printer server. This is very easy and usually takes about 15 minutes to complete. Once done, this device pulls only meter information such as Model, Serial Number, Volume, and Toner Levels. This useful information allows us to streamline your meters for billing, toner ordering, and manage volumes to make sure we are helping with cost-effective measures to help your business environment. It also allows us to diagnose issues as well so we can be more proactive in fixing service issues.

“But Jon, is this safe for this to be installed on my network?” The short answer is yes, it only pulls device information on the machine…No personal information. Information is only pulled that can be found on a status page and would not matter if it were from a bank, school, or hospital!

Low Yield Versus High Yield Toner/Ink

What does that “X” or “A” stand for after the cartridge number? Does it really matter? It has my printer on the box, it must be the right cartridge to use, right? Here is the long story, short…manufacturers for printers usually have a “low yield” and “high yield” cartridge associated with that printer. When you purchase a printer, it comes with that low yield cartridge in the machine to help reduce initial costs for the manufacturer and get you, the consumer, into a mode of purchasing supplies where they make more money.

If you do end up needing toner/ink, make sure to first check with your Supply Specialist at Coordinated or do a simple search to see if your printer can use a high yield cartridge. This is important for your budget as the high yield or “X” cartridge will give you more prints/copies for the dollar.

Here is a simple example to explain how this might help…We need to buy a cartridge for our printer and the display is saying low toner. The low yield cartridge that comes in the machine gives you 3,000 pages at a cost of $80. The high yield cartridge that the machine can use has a page yield of 9,000 pages and a cost of $180. Initially, you see the much lower price point on the low yield toner and think that might be the better option. But, once you do the math, for the low yield toner you get roughly 38 pages for the dollar. For the high yield, you get 50 pages for the dollar. In the printer world, we call that getting a better “Cost Per Page” with the high yield toner versus the low yield. The only circumstance where we might suggest low yield is if you believe that cartridge will last for over a year than it might be advantageous to purchase the toner at a lower price point.