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Hi,

I hope I'm not too far off topic on this board. If I am, I claim the shock I've just had as my defence.

Late last year I bought a Brother laser printer which is terrific - until just now when I checked the price of changing the toner cartridges.

Works out at just over € 400 - if I buy them at a discount online.

I've asked for a price from the shop where I bought it but expect that to be worse.

I've heard of places in the UK where you can take your cartridges and they will fill them back up for you.

Is anyone aware of anything similar in France? If so, have you used them and were they any good?

Thanks in advance for any help
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It would not shock me. I have a Brother laser black and white, and a Konica laser colour printer. I checked the price of the toners before I bought the printers.

If you need a new toner than you must have printed around 3000 pages which would be about 20 inkjet refills at around 30 euros each. I would say that you were saving loads of money.

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I've just bought my second Samsung CLP300 colour laser printer (one for each son) It has a duty cycle for the toners of 20 000 (yes 20k) sheets of A4.  After No. 1 son giving it a good hammering at Uni all year, it has hardly made a dent in the toners.  A set of toners cost £90, which is odd as a new printer has just cost me £84 !!!
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Pierre, the drum has a life of 20,000, but the toners are 2000 for black and 1000 for colour. See further down the page, here. That is the reason that I discounted that particular printer.

Many printers have smaller toners in them at first purchase and that is why full toner kits that you buy afterwards seem expensive.

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I've just bought my second Samsung CLP300 colour laser printer (one for each son) It has a duty cycle for the toners of 20 000 (yes 20k) sheets of A4.  After No. 1 son giving it a good hammering at Uni all year, it has hardly made a dent in the toners.  A set of toners cost £90, which is odd as a new printer has just cost me £84 !!!

I think you will fiind that 20000 is the life of the drum

The stated average life of the toners is 2000 sheets , though the initial kit they include with the printer is for only 1500 B&W sheets......

Edit Someone bea tme to it .  I was fighting off a not to be missed money making scheme being offered by a call centre... http://www.samsung.com/us/consumer/detail/spec.do?group=printersmultifunction&type=printersmultifunction&subtype=colorlaserprinters&model_cd=CLP-300/XAA&fullspec=F

 

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Very interesting discussion.

I have an old Brother 1230 (I think) balck and white laser which is so old it still has a parallel port and no USB.   I've changed the toner once at a cost of about £55 and it has run fine ever since.  

I've often wondered whether to get a colour laser but have always checked first on the price of replacement materials and have got cold feet at that point.   It simply can't be possible that a new colour printer can retail for about £110 whilst the caboodle of colour replacements is in excess of £250;   even the explanation from shop assistants that the supplied cartridges are only "half full" can't explain the discrepancy.

In my view Ladies and Gentlemen what you are seeing here is a ramp.   Sell the machine at a loss and then rake in the profits on the refills.

And I don't do ramps if I can help it. 

And it's not very green where it's cheaper to keep buying a new machine rather than recycle the cartridges and replace them.

Maybe I'm missing something,   but the money at least stays in my pocket.

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[quote user="Martinwatkins"]I have an old Brother 1230 (I think) balck and white laser which is so old it still has a parallel port and no USB.   I've changed the toner once at a cost of about £55 and it has run fine ever since.[/quote]

(As posted in Another Place.)  Not an option for the OP as the printer is too new, but for that Brother, you can refill yourself cheaply, also the Samsung CLP-300.

Three refills for a Samsung monochrome printer cost me about the same as a third-party pattern cartridge.  Very easy to do.  I have no affiliation, except as a satisfied customer.

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  which is why I no longer put my empty cartridges (this is the inkjet,  not the laser) in those recycling bins,  'cos I feel they should be giving ME some money in exchange,  instead of my paying another €30 for a new one with nothing in return!

I get more cantankerous every day....

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I've just put in an order to them,  and it's worth pointing out that you CAN'T order via the website as their system rejects a non-UK IP address  (even if you're asking for shipment to a UK postal address)

But a phone call to them has bypassed all that,  extremely helpful chap there,  so I shall wait for the stuff to arrive.

Thanks again for the recommendation.

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It's not that important,   but while waiting for my order (above) I found I'd got a refill kit from Lidl for my HP cartridge no 15.   Having two empty ones in the bin,  I thought I'd try it.

Now it has to be said that the more recent one has been in the bin for about six weeks,  and probably was run pretty dry,  but I followed the instructions with the refill,  peeling off the little black label,  pushing the steel ball through,  filling the cartridge up,  putting a new ball in place,  and resealing with a new label.

I congratulated both myself and the simplicity of the kit,  installed the cartridge in the printer and tried to print.    Winking orange light - dead.  After a bit I took the refilled cartridge out;   just as well I did as ink was oozing out of the print head at an alarming rate.   I sucked some ink out (wasting another steel ball) but ink continues to ooze out in anything other than the upside down position.   Luckily the printer appears undamaged.

Now I know the pros on here will say false economy,  but what have I done wrong?   Can anyone explain why the ink is oozing out - should I add treacle to the mix??!!

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I could almost hear the collective "sucking in of air between teeth" from the pros,  and none of you obviously feel able to bring yourselves to comment on such amateur goings-on,

but

This morning - having left the offending re-filled cartridge upside down ovenight - I turned it the right way up to see if it still leaked.  No - no ink came out.  I put it in the printer,  it was accepted,  I printed a page - Bingo!

Apparently a self-healing cartridge.

I feel like a child with an unexpected present.....

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  • 2 weeks later...
This may not quite be the right place to ask this but it follows on from earlier

I ordered -  exactly two weeks ago - four ink cartridges from Internet Ink following the recommendation on pg 2 of this thread.   They were despatched on Monday 15th September to our Devon address (by 1st class post) where they should have been picked up by our PO redirection service and sent on to France.  

Unfortunately they haven't arrived yet,  and I'm increasingly concerned that they won't.   I don't for a second doubt that the company despatched the order as they say,  but I'm beginning to wonder what will happen if the package has gone for good.   I paid by credit card,   should I consider asking for the payment to be stopped?    If goods aren't delivered by the PO,  whose "fault" is it and who foots the bill?

As I say,  I'll give it another few days, and whilst I don't want to stop payment to a company that has acted in good faith,  at the same time I haven't got my ink.

In the meantime,  any advice gratefully received.

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Martin, one of the types of machines I used to work on as an IBM hardware eng were all sorts of printers, from pick up and walk away with to 30 foot long ones. One thing that I learned with the little ones was that more were damaged because customers went for the cheap ink/refill options. I have not tried the refills, but Internet Ink, if you can believe their web site use a very good quality ink. Personally if I had the choice between a cheep refil and paying FULL price I would take the full price.

As for the post over here. We have had several instances where we have had to wait 3 weeks for things to arrive. Others arrive in a few daze, it's France I suppose?

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Unfortunately they haven't arrived yet,  and I'm increasingly concerned that they won't. 

Have you checked that they haven't been returned to the vendor?

The Royal Mail information about website redirection service gives two reasons for my thinking that this is the problem.

1 They won't forward any post which dispatched by one of the alternative carriers such as TNT or Business Post.

More Importantly

2 Is there any mail you can’t redirect?

Yes, we can’t redirect the following:............................

  • International mail – any item bigger than Letter format over 25mm thickness and over 100g that clearly contains goods, cannot be redirected abroad
  • This is because:

    • Items containing goods sent to non-EU destinations require a CN22 or CN23 customs declaration. These must be completed and signed by the sender at the time of posting and therefore cannot be completed by Royal Mail as part of the Redirection process

    • All countries have specific lists of prohibitions and restrictions detailing what can and cannot be sent to them. Royal Mail cannot therefore redirect packages abroad, as the contents will be unknown and may transgress the prohibitions and restrictions in the destination country

    • International maximum size restrictions are 40% smaller than those allowable in Royal Mail’s domestic services. Unfortunately, therefore, a proportion of packages will be too large to be sent abroad. Any packages that we cannot redirect will be returned to the sender.

    http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/content1?mediaId=50900697&catId=600008#34000330

     

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