If you’ve ever enjoyed the benefits of a buyback program, you’d be quick to see it resembles an insurance policy — but without the pains of the insurance cover.
We All Love Safety and It’s Perfectly OK
If you have an insurance policy or manage one for someone else then you know the goal — reduce or eliminate exposure to risk. Insurance covers for your losses or reduces the impact of a loss.
Insurance is a tool for managing risk. If your business would have gone under, an insurance cover could be the rescue. If theft or damage leaves you exposed to never having a car again, an insurance policy could save the day. If a serious illness or accident makes it impossible for you to ever work again, an insurance coverage could help. You can insure just about anything these days.
We all love safety, so we reduce our risk exposure. Risk management has three core areas:
- Risk identification
- Risk assessment
- Risk control
How Risky is Owning Toner Cartridges?
Image Credit: Pixabay
Let’s be clear. I’m not talking about fire or theft insurance or any of the other outrageous outcomes — you can mitigate those kinds of risk exposure in other ways (includes taking up policies with an insurance company, if you can). But that’s not the point here.
Cover for theft and damage related risks if you can, but how do you cover for risks you have no way of anticipating?
I can hear you whispering “what kind of risk are you talking about?” Let’s take three scenarios.
The first scenario: Falling demand for OEM or compatible toners or inks.
It’s September 18, 2016. You’ve just bought your laser or inkjet printers for your company — perhaps a dozen or more printers. You also bought toners or inks — lots of them. You’ve taken care of your printing needs; the work is done and dusted — or so you think.
Fast forward to October 10, 2016, just days after a major ink and toner manufacturer decided to discontinue some of its copier cartridges. A friend brings to your attention to the cartridge discontinuation announcement. The cartridges you just acquired for your dozen new printers are being phased out!
Suddenly all the warranties on your printers are nulled.
You’re forced to think of solutions to a problem you didn’t see coming. OEMs (and compatible) cartridge manufacturers discontinue productions a lot; they do it when demand for a product falls for too long. Decreased demand signals to the manufactures that they need a new product and can’t support warranties on the old one any longer.
When manufacturers discontinue a cartridge, they also force you to buy new office supplies. Phasing out a product is part of their business plan! You just don’t know when the phasing out will happen.
The second scenario: OEM sabotages compatible toner manufacturers.
Image Credit: Pixabay
Apart from fallen demand and the need to improve sales, OEM cartridge manufacturers discontinue their products to undermine compatible cartridge manufacturers.
Last year in the Netherlands, the same ink and toner manufacturer from earlier publicly admitted to deliberately destroying the compatible cartridge market using this ‘printer error’ technique. They programmatically annulled the use of compatible cartridges on their printers.
The third scenario: Your copier stops working for no good reason.
You’ve just stocked up on your ink or toner supplies, only to have your copier machine breakdown. After a technician checks it up, he says it’s best to purchase a new printer.
There’s just one problem — you wouldn’t be able to buy that exact copier. Possibly, your copier machine is no longer available in the market, or it’s too expensive, or for some other reasons, it’s just out of your reach for now. Suddenly you have a pile of ink or toner cartridges you wouldn’t need anymore.
What do you do?
Cry, hope and pray for a miracle? What if you had some form of insurance to cut the losses you’ve incurred, would that help?
In all of the scenarios, you’d have invested hundreds or thousands of dollars only to lose that money to unpredictable circumstances.
How do you insure against these three scenarios above without paying unhealthy insurance premiums? Let’s find out. Read on.
How to Get FREE Insurance on Your Unused Toner Cartridges
Image Credit: Pixabay
If you ever get caught up in any of three scenarios I described, a toner buyback program will help. Now, don’t jump on just any repurchase program. Repurchase arrangements differ one from the other — look closer.
Staples, Best Buy, OEM manufacturer ink cartridge programs, and even a governmental website (The County of Kaua’i) all have printer cartridge recycling or buyback programs. You want insurance here. You want to cut your losses — not make things worse.
Wouldn’t it be helpful if you know what to look out for when deciding what buyback programs to use?
I guess you nodded in affirmation.
Image Credit: Pixabay
Now, what ingredients should you look out for in a cartridge buyback program?
- Speed: You shouldn’t have to go through processes that overwhelm you, waste precious time and wait forever to have your printers bought (or rejected). You want a quick quote and status updates.
- Ease: You shouldn’t have to haul a truckload of cartridges across the street or to a city nearby. An excellent unused cartridge buyback program should worry about the transportation of your cartridges, so you don’t have to.
- Pays well: What’s the point if your insurance cover pays you next to nothing? Great insurance companies pay well if you ever need to claim your cover. Your cartridge buyer should feel like a great insurance cover, especially when paying you the money.
- Pays fast: I should say “pays first.” A great program should be quick to pay you once they’ve decided to buy. A quick payment removes the uncertainty of waiting and curbs the temptation to sell to someone else. Fast payments benefit everyone.
- Instant Shipping Labels: No one wants to wait to have shipping labels emailed to them. You should be able to print them on your own.
Most toner and ink cartridge buyback programs don’t have all of these five ingredients — some programs don’t even have any of them!
Full discretion, we are promoting ourselves here but we do have all of the above features. With our new website, you also now have one-stop access to every step of the process from when you ask for a quote until we receive and inspect your ink and toner.