Bruce L. Bergman wrote:
On Sat, 13 May 2006 15:37:13 -0400, Jeff Wisnia
wrote:


We rent a Neopost Model IJ25 postage meter for our office use, and they
are raping us when we need to replace the red inkjet cartridge which
prints the postage and our logo on everything we mail. I got a "low ink"
warning on the postage meter display yesterday and called to order
another cartridge. Last time, about 6 months ago, the price with
shipping was about $65, this time it was up to $85.

To add insult to injury, Neopost has arranged for their inkjet cartridge
to "run out" 6 months after the date it's installed, even if we only
printed postage on jsut a few envelopes during that time, and it also
"runs out" after a predetermined number of impressions, even though
there's plenty of ink left inside it.

I busted open the last dead cartridge and found what I expected inside,
a standard looking inkjet cartridge with HP's name and logo on it, along
with an IC chip which must be what's letting Neopost laugh all the way
to the bank at their customers' expense.

I've asked a few online sellers of inkjet cartridge refilling stuff
whether they can help, without any luck thus far.


An old dodge for HP printers was they are not "monitoring the ink
supply" as much as running a per-page countdown timer on the
cartridge. And in the case of the postage meter printers, they put a
6-month expiry on as well as a count to empty. This is allegedly so
they don't have "printing problems" with old dried out cartridges, but
in practice it's planned obsolescence and a great way to drive
consumables sales.

The old dodge for using refilled cartridges with the HP printers was
to have a bunch of old cartridges around, since the cartridge serial
number memory was kept in a simple First In First Out buffer. If you
tried swapping between two cartridges, it would remember that far back
and insist both were "empty".

But if you cycled a magic number of separate "full" (unknown serial
number) cartridges through (IIRC either 3 or 6) you would flush
cartridge #1's serial out of the buffer. Then you refill cartridge
#1, stick it back in, the printer thinks that serial number is a new
cartridge, and you're good to go.

If you kept the old cartridges for the meter you might try this...
Myself, I gave up inkjets for laser long ago. Slightly higher
up-front investment, outweighed by the far lower per-page cost.

At about one cartridge every 8 months or so, It'll take me quite a while
to accumulate three old ones to try and with my luck it'll need six or
more. G

But you do have to compare between lasers now also, some of the
lower-end units are way out of line on the cartridge prices (and are
shipped with half-empty "starter" toner cartridges) to try to get back
in the "make more money selling the consumables" pricing model.

Yes, we have five laser printers in the office, all Samsungs using the
same toner cartridge. I do refill those cartridges, I can usually do
that to them twice before the drums start to give out, about the time
they're ready to run out of the last refill.

I bought a tool for about ten bucks which is just a little soldering
iron with something that looks like a 3/8" copper sweat pipe cap mounted
where the soldering bit would be. The hot edge of the cap melts a neat
round hole through the plastic wall of the cartridges without producing
any plastic chips to foul thing up. I think it costs me about $3-$4 per
refill, buying toner on the web.


Anyone here encountered this and figured out a way to get around it
without going back to licking postage stamps?


Licking? I thought Self Stick Stamps was the next big thing... ;-P

I was just setting myself up for telling the story about the time the
Ruskys came out with a series of postage stamps with Josef Stalin's
image on them. There were numerous complaints about the stamps not
sticking to envelopes and upon investigation the Russian postal
authorities discovered the reason.....People were spitting on the wrong
side of the stamps.

They make semi-automatic dispensers for self-stick coil postage
stamps, Google on "Stamp EZ".

Or buy the old-style mucilage coil stamps and find an old Postaffix
stamp dispenser - in one quick push it squirts two drops of water onto
the envelope from a little water tank, advances a stamp from the roll,
cuts it off, and stomps it down on the envelope. We used to fire off
weekly 1,000 piece postcard mailings with them all the time -
Kerchunk, Kerchunk, Kerchunk...

We looked into postage meters a few times - and using a Small
Business budget model we always went back to the Postaffix. Unless
you churn enough postage through the machine every month where you are
actually running the ink cartridges dry, and you or an employee are
spending half the day just handling the mailing duties, it simply
isn't worth the meter leasing and consumables costs.

Prolly correct, but the two lovely ladies who do most of the mail
stamping in our little company have been with us a long time and are
used to using a postage meter with its calculating scale and not having
to fiddle with stamps and secure them from pilferage.

I'm certain if I tried to shift us back to stamps It'd be received as
well as my bringing them some bulky sweaters in the winter and turning
the thermostat down to 50 F. I'd further convince them that Jack Benny
had nothing on me.

Plus, we need postage amounts above 39 cents on quite a bit of our mail
which runs over the weight or size that will go for 39 cents.

We refill our meter with about $200 of postage a month, and I'd guess
that'd equate to about 400 impressions a month, or 20 per work day. I've
got a feeling that if we used "real stamps" there'd be some money wasted
through sticking more postage value than required on a fair amount of stuff.



I thought there's fair trade laws in the US which keep manufacturers

from forcing their customers to buy supplies only from them and also

keep them from putting "poison pills" in stuff. But maybe I'm wrong
about that, and because the USPS is involved Neopost can argue that the
gummint is making them do it that way to make sure the imprints come out
nice and clear.


You don't think the gummint folks that worked out the deal to bypass
those 'fair trade' rules were in cahoots with P-B and Neopost, getting
favors and kickbacks, now do you? ^_^

Hell, look at the California Insurance Commissioner, who is supposed
to act as a consumer watchdog - half the time, the guy worked as an
insurance industry executive before he gets elected, and goes back
into the insurance industry after he leaves office. Now whose side do
you think he's REALLY on?

-- Bruce --


Last comment on mailing....I recently discovered that the USPS regs
require more than 39 cents postage on an envelope if it's square rather
than rectangular. Makes sense when you figure that automatic handling
equipment would have a pretty hard time properly orienting a square.

Jeff (Still raining cats and dogs here. I just came in from outside
where I stepped in a poodle.)

--
Jeffry Wisnia
(W1BSV + Brass Rat '57 EE)
"Life is like a sewer -- what you get out of it depends on what you put
into it."