Now this is some valuable printer ink! I came across a new story online where a truck carrying $200,000.00 worth of printer ink cartridges was hijacked.
The events took place in Johor Baru, Malaysia (I had to check Wikipedia to find out more about the location of Johor Baru). Where the truck was transporting the ink cartridges to Senai when it was blocked by another truck. The drive was blindfolded and dumped in an oil palm estate before the hijackers drove away with the truck and the cartridges.
We’ve heard people complain about the price of printer ink. I guess it is this price that makes it so valuable. Better take some armed security to your mailbox the next time you receive a package from Pacific Ink!
What do you think of this ink hijacking hi jinx? Let us know.
Ah . . . It’s good to be back! It has been a while since The Ink Blog has seen a post. We had some other projects going on that detracted from our ability to provide our insight in to the world of printer ink. Hope you didn’t miss us too much.
Anyway, let’s kick it off with some Lexmark news.
In another attempt to revitalize their sagging sales Lexmark launched a new program that will award customers with free printer cartridges. There really was not much of a sigh of relief from Lexmark printer users when this announcement hit. Those folks are still reeling from the high cost of their inkjet printer or laser printer (See: Lexmark Profits Down) and the fact that they still have to buy five ink cartridges within a 12 month period before they get one for free.
Here are the details of the program:
Customers must purchase five printer cartridges within a 12 month period. After doing so, Lexmark awards the customer with one free ink cartridge. Lexmark states that ‘most” of their cartridges are part of the program. In addition to earning a free cartridge by buying cartridges, Lexmark will also award you with a free cartridge when you send them five empty printer cartridges during a 12 month period. So, in total you could be awarded with 2 free cartridges a year. And, cartridges must be purchased from Lexmarkstore.com to be counted.
Lexmark hopes this customer based program can help stimulate sales of their printer cartridges. Only problem is . . . If you don’t have many printers in the market you can’t sell to many printer cartridges. Pacific Ink has seen the sales of Lexmark replacement cartridges slow over the past year, just as they have cut back on the number of new printer models they are releasing.
So, as everyone should, we applaud Lexmark for recycling cartridges. As for their free cartridge reward plan, we’ll wait and see what happens. None of their recent endeavors have been strong enough to put them back in the black. But, we have a suggestion. Be like HP, Canon, and Epson - release a ton of new printers every quarter!
What do you think of Lexmark’s plan? Let us know what you think.
