MANAGED PRINT Archives - Page 2 of 2

Beware of callers selling toner: It could be the Grinch … or a toner scammer!

?Tis the season to be jolly … So don’t be a victim of toner folly.

If someone calls your office trying to sell you toner, they are scammers trying to sell you an inferior product at an exorbitant price.

Like how the Grinch is to presents and Christmas, these callers are to your cash, and for this time of year, your Christmas cheer — because nobody is happy when they find out they’ve been duped.

Toner phoners are real!

A few days ago, an employee for one of our clients in Oklahoma City contacted us through our website, Jenny, the employee, reported she had received a call from a man claiming to be her Ricoh representative and to be with R.K. Black. She said after he “rattled off some toner price increase” and she refused him, telling him she didn’t need any toner, the conversation ended quickly.

“I wasn’t sure if this was a legit call or not but I feel like it was not,” Jenny said, explaining she had initially became suspicious with the caller as he kept referring to the R.K. Black service technician as a him when her company had had a female technician all year.

“Anyway, I just thought I would reach out and see if it was a legit call or not. I’m sure my refusal of the toner did the trick either way,” she wrote.

You are correct, Jenny. The call was not legit. And great job on not letting the Grinch dupe you!

So how do you know a toner Grinch when he calls?

No, the caller won’t have a voice that sounds like a growly Jim Carrey. Nor will your caller ID display the image of a disgruntled-looking creature made of matted green fur. Rather, the scammer will call implying they are from our company (or whoever provides your office technology) or from your copier’s manufacturer and will say toner prices are getting ready to jump due to some fabricated disaster or shortage. They then will urge you to avoid those high prices, you should BUY NOW.

Sounds like Jenny’s story, right?

Also, don’t be surprised if the caller names names or mentions key members of your staff. In fact, expect it! The caller has likely done their research, searching your company and it’s employees online. DON’T BUY IT! — figuratively and literally!

What to do about toner phoners

Now that you know what these toner scammers sound like, here are three actions you can take against them:

Educate your office about these scams so that like this client, they will recognize something fishy when they see it.
If you get such a toner scam call, ask the caller for a phone number by which to call them back. This typically results in belligerence (kinda like a Grinch) or you’ll hear the quick click of the phone on other end being hung up.
If you receive toner to your office and you aren’t familiar with it or company sending it, don’t pay for it. Rather, call the company and tell them to pick it up. You can also reach out to the Better Business Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission for further help.

?We’ve got you covered

But just so you know, as a practice, our company does not call our clients to sell toner as most of our service contracts include toner as part of the “cost per click” charge. As such, we will replace the toner as it is needed making it unnecessary for us to call you.

And of course, if you need toner, just give us a call and we will send Santa or one of our elves to bring it to you — kinda like this guy in the picture above.

?Until then, may your Christmas be merry and white, but when it comes to toner calls, may you be wary and wise. Happy Holiday’s

Case Study: How managed print brought savings and sanity to Southern Nazarene University’s printing environment

MANAGED PRINT, VIDEOS

Some people have skeletons in their closets, others elephants in their rooms, but this client, who handles the information technology matters an Oklahoma City-based private university said she had an ape problem on campus. The APE “I call it the APE — which stands for anarchistic printing environment,” said Chichi Freelander, speaking of Southern Nazarene University’s 333 printers across campus. This armada of ink and toner slingers had no standard model, no standard purchasing and no standard support. “My network administrators and network technicians were becoming very frustrated with IT printing support calls — like adding surprise printers to the network or finding drivers and software to install on each machine.” The university’s chief financial officer, Scott Strawn, said sometimes the printing situation could make him take a bat to a printer — an act otherwise known as “going ‘Office Space.’” “It was so completely out of control and so many different people purchasing things, that it was very difficult to even get a hard figure on what we were actually spending,” he said, saying how eventually printer cartridges themselves became a currency. He said university staff would buy cartridges, store multiple stacks of them, as well as cases and cases of paper. It was time for a change, so that is where R.K. Black, an Oklahoma City office technology company. Discovery Freelander said the company, already having had a contract with the university for some multi-function printers, for some years had been talking with the university encouraging the school to standardize the rest of its printers and outsource its support to tame the print environment. R.K. Black’s district sales manager Gary Hackett who was the one who had been speaking with Freelander and Strawn about implementing a managed print solution when the conversation turned to Bresee Hall, the university’s administrative building. The hall had 56 printers for 54 workers. “They were doing really one-to-one — they had pretty much one printer to one associate in every office,” said Hackett. Once SNU gave R.K. Black the permission to carry out a study, he and Chris Robertson, company’s analyst, and also an SNU alumnus, performed a facility walk-through during which they touched every printing device, mapped their locations and used software to determine the best solution for the APE-like environment. Following the study, Hackett presented the university with a managed print service plan that reduced the number of the printers on campus from 333 to 118 — a two-thirds cut, something Freelander really liked. “This was very appealing to us. This is what we wanted to do,” said Freelander. Implementation and Results The university then accepted and implemented the plan and the changes became readily apparent. During the plan’s execution, Bresee Hall saw the most improvement, the number of printers being slashed 56 to 18 strategically-placed devices. But these were not the only transformations. With the installation of the new devices and capabilities, students and staff acquired a new capability with badge-based FollowMe printing technology to print from their laptops or computers to any printer on campus available to them — whether that was the dorm, lab, office or library. Not only that, but with the technology, if students decided not to release a print job, the job would not print, saving the school money in toner and paper costs. For one month alone, there were 17 reams of print jobs that did not get released,” said Freelander. “So that was quite a savings. Otherwise that paper would have wound up in the trash and in the recycle bin and would have been just a waste. Hackett said the cost savings mentioned here were significant, those 17 reams amounting to about $800 spared, not to mention the trees and other resources saved. I think at the end of the day … you can just tell that first of all, we know where we are printing,” said Strawn describing the advantages of the new managed print service. “We’ve already begun to track (our printing). I know who’s printing what. I know where my large print areas are. I know who the large print users are. We know when things ebb and flow. So from a tracking perspective, even five, six months in, I feel like we can project and think about and plan for when expenses are going to happen. I know we’ve got a good deal in term of the toner and the support and the devices,” he continued, saying he doesn’t have associates buying printers of questionable quality or having to buy printers because they are often cheaper than cartridges. So things are significantly better. If your print environment is leaving you feeling frustrated, it may be time to consider a managed print services solution.

About R.K. Black, Inc. R.K. Black, Inc. is an Oklahoma City-based, family-owned leading provider of office technology solutions to businesses in Oklahoma and Kansas. We specialize in everything business technology from copier, fax, printer and scanner technology to document management, onsite paper shredding services, VoIP phone systems and managed IT support to video surveillance solutions. If you want to learn more about us, feel free to explore the website, read our other blogs or click the button below to be contacted by one of our reps and tell you! Also, be sure to keep watching our social media channels on Facebook and Twitter for more business tips from our blog.

7 Steps to clean up a copier toner spill

MANAGED PRINT

Maybe you were only swapping waste toner bottles or installing a new toner cartridge and shook it just a bit too hard. All you know is, you have a massive mess on your hands— and on your shirt, your shoes, the copier and the floor. As daunting as it may look, if you get after it right away — in the right way — it’ll be like nothing ever happened at all.

But first, before you do anything, remember that heat is not your friend when in comes to toner, unless of course you are printing something. It’s heat that fuses toner to paper and it’s heat that will fuse toner to your skin, clothing or whatever. In other words, while you may think warm or hot water will do the trick, don’t do it. Always use cold water!

Secondly, toner is made of extremely fine plastic particles and is therefore easily dispersed in the air and strongly affected by static electricity. For these reasons, never use a standard vacuum cleaner to clean it up. If you do, well, let’s just say if you thought you had a mess before, you will surely will have one now — and even risk a fire. You’ll find copier service techs equipped with an ESD(Electrostatic Discharge-safe) toner vacuum with a HEPA filter and electrically conductive hose. If you don’t have one of these gadgets, please call your copier tech who does.

Now, you can follow these seven easy steps:

Protect yourself. Toner is an extremely fine powder and you don’t want to breathe it and get it all over your skin. So before tackling the cleanup project, be sure to put on a paper facemask and some disposable gloves.

If you have a large amount of loose toner, scoop it up, place it in a bag and seal it. You can throw it in the trash, but you might need to check your local regulations to see if such material is prohibited and dispose of it accordingly.

Grab a paper towel, wet it with cool water and wipe down the surfaces at the spill site.

If you got any toner on clothing or other fabric, while still wearing the facemask, take the item outside over a trashcan and shake the item out. If any toner remains, you can toss the item in a clothes washer, but make sure to only run the machine on cold, otherwise the toner will melt and adhere to and stain the item. Also, do not iron or dry the item in the dryer without being absolutely sure all the toner is out, or else that design in your shirt will be permanent.

If you find toner on the carpet, dampen a clean towel with dry cleaning fluid and dab up the toner with that. Don’t use water. If you use water, you are liable to stain the carpet. Otherwise, use a toner vacuum.

Any remaining toner on the floor or other surface you can vacuum up with a toner vacuum cleaner. Again, as toner is very fine, it’s important to use this vacuum as its filters can pick-up toner without dispersing the fine powder through the air.

Check to see if your copier has a cleaning cycle. If yes, start it and that should remove any loose powder in the piece of equipment. Also, you can run ten or 20 copies and that should clean it up. If you find quite a large amount of toner inside the machine, you might want to contact your technology service provider for a technician to do the work so as to avoid injury to yourself or the machine.

And just for a final note, if your business has quite a few machines and goes through a bit of toner, thus increasing the chances for a toner mishap, you might want to talk with your office technology dealer to see if they will lend you an ESD-safe toner vacuum.

Goodbye, Robo! Hello, Human!

MANAGED PRINT

Don’t you just hate those robo-calls? You know, the ones you get just as you’re sitting down to dinner with your family and you pick up only to hear “Did you know that according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation there is a home break-in in the United States every 15 seconds?…” Yada. Yada. Yada. Annoying, right? Even worse are those automatic answering services. Your office copier keeps jamming, let’s say. So, you call R.K. Black, Inc., your local office technology provider, for instance, to talk to a real person to fix it, like, yesterday. But instead of reaching a human, you get a pre-recorded greeting directing you to press this and that number guiding you through some sort of Greek mythology-inspired auditory/electronic Labyrinth with not even a real, live, Minotaur to greet you as you make your way to the service dispatchers — all along, precious minutes and patience just wasting away. Well, enough with that bull (not that you ever saw the Minotaur anyway) and his maze! Now, if you find yourself in a jam and call R.K. Black for help, you’ll get a real live human. Beginning last week, anybody calling (405) 943-9805 for service or supplies in Oklahoma City, between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. on workdays, got a real, live, talking, breathing human answering the phone. So from now on, when you call, we answer. Quick, simple, clear, direct… human… the way phone calls are meant to be.

Next Entries »