By Julian Patel, Xerox Supplies General Manager, Xerox Europe
In my previous post, ‘When it Comes to the Price of Productivity, Supplies Matter’ we saw how Buyers Laboratory Inc.’s (BLI) report exposed the image-quality disadvantages you can encounter if you choose cheap printer supplies.
Like your car, you simply need your printer to work properly – every time, all of the time. Therefore, image quality is only one of several vital functions you need to consider. And if you don’t have the right, quality toner, trouble could be ahead.
For example, BLI documented serious and costly failure modes with bargain-brand toner cartridges in their ‘Genuine Xerox Phaser 6010 Brand Print Cartridges vs. Ninestar Brand’ report:
As BLI states: “Both of the black Ninestar cartridges failed because the printers would not accept the cartridges, while the yellow cartridge failed due to a loud grinding noise.” I’m guessing this isn’t something you’d want to hear when printing!
In fact, the report details the Ninestar brand toner caused significant page-yield reduction and print-quality issues as well as the inferior reliability issue. This can be summed up simply as: you pay less, you get less and have a higher failure rate.
But these are the ‘hard’ costs you see up front…
What about the soft costs? What about potential lost productivity? The time it takes to find another printer, source new toner, clean and fix the old printer, etc, etc.
What it comes down to is: does it really make sense to save a little money up front when there’s so much at risk?
We definitely don’t think it’s worth it.
If you choose non-Xerox toner for your Xerox device, you’re putting your printer’s reliability at serious risk and your productivity in jeopardy. And my guess is reliability was an important factor when you chose Xerox in the first place.
So here’s my bottom line—and let me know what you think: You chose to purchase a Xerox printer for good image quality, performance and reliability.
Now you know what you do from BLI’s analysis, would you risk putting cheaper alternative supplies in your Xerox printer? Why not read the full BLI report and post your comments here?
Thanks for reading.
