Old New Ink

Sunday (3 June) I ordered Yellow and Vivid Light Magenta inks from my usual vendor, IT Supplies. Yesterday I received the ink. The logistics of these things always fascinate me. The Y shipped from Minnesota, in a "Jiffylite"® bag. The VLM shipped in a cardboard box from California. Both shipped via UPS, and arrived together, same day, same front porch in western Montana. Amazing.

I opened the box, and found a large Epson carton with the VLM. This carton is larger than, and physically quite different in form from the previous four inks I've received. The expiration date on the VLM is January, 2014.

The new VLM (center), the new Y (right), and the LLK I've had on-hand for a few
months. The package for the oldest of the lot, the Y, is a tight fit to the cartridge. The
other cartons are much larger. The VLM carton is heavy corrugated cardboard, while the
others are thin fiberboard.

I opened the bag, and found a very small Epson carton with the Y cartridge. This carton is very thin fiberboard, and smaller than the other inks I have on hand. Epson's clearly found reason to tinker with their packaging design. The expiration date on the Y is July, 2012. We're about three weeks from its expiration date, making it useless to me. It's all but certain I wouldn't install this ink in the printer before the expiration date.

This morning I called IT Supplies. I spoke with Chris for about 30 seconds. He promised to get a new Y on the way, one with a more typical (18 months, more or less) expiration date, and to email a return label for the "old" Y.

I've used IT Supplies for ink and paper as long as I've been printing because they have good prices, nice people to deal with, and almost always ship quickly. Orders greater that USD $100 ship free; it's always too easy to exceed $100 when ordering. I've had a couple of problems before with shipments from them, usually the result of horrible packaging. In those cases I assumed they had a new kid working in the shipping department, a kid with no common sense, and they didn't train him very well or make him put away his cell phone. But IT Supplies has always handled any problem quickly, and with minimum hassle for me.

They should never have sent the old ink. Fortunately, I don't need it today, and they are taking care of the problem.

I'm happy the VLM is a keeper. The "starter" ink cartridge in the printer has just dropped down to 1%, not sufficient to proceed if I need to do a cleaning on that channel. I should mention that all of the inks in my 7900 are still the starter inks, the 90ml cartridges that come with the machine. Several are showing 1% on the LCD, and have been for weeks. When a cleaning is required I'm usually asked by the printer to replace those inks. After the cleaning, I've reinstalled the 1% cartridges, and then continued printing as usual.

Update: My friend Dean, who's had a 7900 for several years, ordered ink a month ago from B&H. One of the cartridges he received had an expiration date of August, 2012. He returned it for a "fresher" replacement. The replacement had exactly the same expiration date as the one he'd just returned. Giving up on B&H, Dean returned that ink, and then ordered from IT Supplies. He's not yet received that order. One can only wonder what he'll get.

Update #2: If I'd seen this, I probably wouldn't have made this posting. I've been a little busy, and hadn't looked at the Luminous Landscape forums in several days.

  --Jay