Friday, August 08, 2008

I'm in gripe mode this week.

As I mentioned in my last post, part of our adventure to OfficeMax included getting ripped off by the price of printer ink. I know, get in line. As I mentioned, we us a Canon Pixma ip5200. It's actually quite a nice printer. It does photos well, it's fast and quiet, and it prints two-sided. And, as I mentioned one of the "selling points" at the time was that each ink comes in it's own cartridge, so you only need to replace the ones you use up instead of wasting the other inks when one color runs out.

Bullfeathers.

Last night I printed twenty copies of an invitation to my daughter's birthday party. It was 4-color, with a couple of photos, and the design was pretty heavy on yellow.

After copy #4, the yellow ran out. I replaced it. After copy #5, the cyan ran out. After copy #6, the magenta ran out. After copy #10, the black ran out.

Good thing I didn't waste all that cyan, magenta, and black when I replaced the yellow.

I'm really considering one of the new printers Kodak is proclaiming will save a ton of money on ink, as their replacement cartridges are only ten bucks for black and 15 for 5-color. Plus with their current sale, you get 4 extra blacks and three color carts with the printer for $149. Considering we just spent around fifty bucks for a set of 5 colors for the canon which will probably last 4 months, this seems like a really good deal. Plus I've been considering buying a scanner for a while.

Trouble is, I can't get a good handle on the reviews of this thing. Some people say it's the greatest thing ever. some say it's horrible. So which is it? Bear in mind most of the printing we do tends to NOT be photos, but rather printouts from websites or color pictures of favorite webkinz characters. But how well it print? And also how well does it scan? Help me Obi Wan, you're my only hope.

Okay, on to my next gripe.

About a month ago I hopped onto the website for Thule car racks to buy a couple of replacement parts. Recently I had to remove the roof rack from our van and discovered two of the "feet" had rusted solid. As a result I had to cut them off. Thule has this handy website from which you can order replacement parts, but the problem as you can see here it listed the foot (the part I needed) as out of stock. but I found it odd that the full kit at the top was available. So I called them.

The nice lady I spoke to told me that this part is no longer manufactured. She said they DO have some in stock, but don't advertise it on the website because they are running low. But regardless she took my order and told me they'd be shipped out in a day or two.

A day or two later, I received ONE foot. Well, that's useful.

I found it odd that the packing slip said quantity=2, so I called them. This guy named Frank, in the Quebec office, told me that this was because the second foot was backordered. I asked him how could they be backordered if they are not manufactured anymore. He paused for a moment, and then I distinctly heard the sound of a metal file drawer opening. Then he said, "I've got one here, I will ship it out to you."

That was nine days ago.

Today I called Thule back, and got Frank again. I asked him what happened to my second foot. He told me that "according to the computer it said there were more in the warehouse, but that was wrong and instead they need to ship from the other warehouse, and that was going to take another week."

You know, when I was a kid, my mom would often drag me along during her visits to the supermarket. And whenever a new flavor of Pop Tarts caught my eye, she would always give me the same sneaky answer. "Those are on sale at the other store.," she would say.

To this day I've never been to "the other store."

Anyone need a roof rack with only three feet?

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