Posted August 30th, 2005 @ 01:18pm by Erik J. Barzeski
To print a 175-page PDF, Kinko's charges 7¢/page. That's $12.25 to print something just because I don't want to use my own laser printer or to read it on-screen. To FedEx/Kinko's I say "bah!"
Staples charges $2.49 + 6¢/page ($12.99). Plus the hold music when I called the store was "Sometimes" by Britney Spears. Uh hmmm…
Needless to say, I'll be reading this on my screen.
This blog contains posts, all written by me, and comments, only some of which were written by me.
About Me
Disclaimer
The Sand Trap
… via Email
firstname@lastname.com
(Think about that one a little.)
… via IM
AIM: iacas
MobileMe: iacas
flickr: iacas
Yahoo: iacas
Twitter: iacas
MSN: iacas@hotmail.com
Xbox Live: erikjb
Google Talk: erikjb@gmail.com
ICQ: 8186546
Don't email me at any of the above IM addresses or I may never see the email. I use these accounts primarily for chat (IM) only.
… on Facebook
http://facebook.com/iacas
Donate Life: Because if you're not using your body parts, someone else can.
Posted 30 Aug 2005 at 2:38pm #
I remember seeing a service online where you could upload your PDF and they would print it and ship it to you. Can't seem to find it now...
Posted 30 Aug 2005 at 3:33pm #
Just curious what price point you *would* accept to print out a 175-page PDF?
Posted 30 Aug 2005 at 4:29pm #
If you don't need color, maybe PrintFu can work for you. http://www.printfu.org/. They have even made automator actions for uploading/ordering, etc.
Posted 30 Aug 2005 at 5:40pm #
PrintFu is 2.5 cents a page - with a 4 dollar base.
Posted 30 Aug 2005 at 6:46pm #
I would agree w/ Peter. What do you expect this to cost? Low-volume printing (even laser-based) is not always a "cheep" thing. The price seems fairly reasonable to me. And, I would choose FedEx Kinko's over Staples anytime.
Posted 30 Aug 2005 at 8:03pm #
"Nipping at the Heals of Kinko's, one PDF at a time" - Print(fu)'s slogan
Posted 30 Aug 2005 at 8:51pm #
$7.50 or less.
Posted 18 Jun 2007 at 4:48pm #
What a scam! "Kinkos" $43.00 to scan (qty 2) 22"x 17" sheet to .pdf (Black and white)
They charge $27 for burning to a 47 Cent CD.
This should be illegal.
Ridgeways not much cheeper.
Why should this cost so much
Posted 09 Dec 2009 at 7:28am #
A couple of two years late to respond to this, but thanks to Google, it's never too late to find really ignorant statements like Doug's...
No, it shouldn't be "illegal" to charge that. If it's really so unreasonable to charge that, someone else will undercut them on price and Kinko's will have to come down. Making it illegal to charge a certain price will just ensure that you won't be able to get that service anywhere at all (particularly relevant in this case). The basic economic ignorance of that statement is just astonishing.
In any even, let me spell it out for you: the reason they charge so much is because you are trying to scan some awfully big sheets (17 x 22). Scanners that can accomplish that task are expensive (on the order of $15,000) and will not be at regular Kinko's stores. For them to maintain that equipment requires that they do things like, I don't know, maybe *pay* for it, which requires charging enough to make it worth their while. Since few people want scans of that giant size of paper, it means there is little demand for it and the price has to be higher just to cover their costs.
So you are asking for a very unusual service where they will have to ship your originals to an off-site location, manually feed them through the giant scanner, verify quality (because you won't pay if they return you a bad scan), and then ship the originals back to you. I'm surprised that $43 was all they wanted to charge you.
As for the CD, if you find that price unreasonable, you could always have spent really not that much more to buy your own burner. But if you just give them a bunch of files to burn (how were you giving them to them?), they still have to take personnel time to prepare to burn the CD and use time on their computers. For manual tasks like that it doesn't make sense for them to take jobs below a certain minimum cost. If they charged you $5, for instance, they would certainly lose money on the job and waste their employee's time on something that doesn't make business sense.
Kinko's isn't a charity, but rather a business. Doug, you seem to expect them to act as your private charity and wonder why they won't charge prices below their costs. Next time you want to complain about pricing, ask yourself how much it would cost you to do it without that service and how much it's worth you to do it. You might not like the price (we'd all like to pay $0 for everything), but if it isn't worth it to you, you are under no obligation to buy the service and if it's worth more than $43 for you, then $43 is a fair price, even if you don't like it.
Posted 20 Jun 2012 at 3:01pm #
I own a copy shop and you would have never gotten that good of a deal. If you want 7 cent copies in my store, you would need to order around a thousand. But, please, feel free to show me up, and go buy a copier for 20 grand and a decent computer to process your info and run copies for people all day long at 7 cents and let me know how your first and only month in business went.