Ink recycling programs change, but you can still benefit
Posted
Nov 12 2008, 10:55 AM
by
Donna Freedman
Rating:
Last weekend Office Depot changed the terms of its printer ink cartridge recycling program. The good news is you still get $3 per eligible cartridge. The better news is that you can now turn in up to 25 per day, or $75 worth; the previous limit was three per day.
The bad news is that Office Depot will now pay in the form of a quarterly gift card, the way that Office Max and Staples already do. Until last weekend, I could walk into Office Depot with three cartridges and get $9 taken off whatever I bought, whether it was school supplies for needy kids, or a ream of paper or grocery item for me.
Last year at Christmas I used ink cartridges to buy Starbucks coffee for 99 cents a pound. (Not that I drink the stuff myself; the coffee became part of a gift basket.) I also used the cartridges to buy art supplies for kids in a family my sister and I adopted for the holidays. Even though the programs make it harder to benefit (more on that below), I'll still be using them and I suggest that you do, too.
In the past, all three stores were willing to give me up to $9 worth of stuff for free. They'll still be doing that, in a manner of speaking, but now they have a good chance of coming out ahead.
The new rules
In a way, I'm surprised it took Office Depot this long to switch. Each time consumers took in three cartridges, they had a $9 head start on what they wanted to buy. In my case, $9 was often all I did spend on those school supplies or whatever; thus I could use the money I'd saved somewhere else.
Under Office Depot's new rules, I have to pay upfront and wait for that $9 to come back to me -- in the form of a gift card that I can't spend anywhere except Office Depot. In addition, "rewards" must total at least $10 before they're given out. The gift cards are mailed two months after the end of the quarter in which they were earned, and expire 90 days after they're issued.
At Staples the rewards must also be at least $10, and take the form of store gift certificates that expire on the last day of the calendar quarter. Anything under $10 is moved to the next calendar quarter; at the end of the calendar year anything under $10 expires.
At Office Max you can bring up to 10 cartridges into the store per week; if you use the company's mail-in program you can recycle more. Rewards are added up monthly and issued up to a month later, also as store gift cards. The cards expire 90 days after they're issued, except in Florida, where they're good for 365 days.
I'd be willing to bet that many shoppers will not spend exactly the amounts on their cards. Instead, the rewards will be used toward larger purchases. And just as consumers tend to forget to use gift cards, I bet that a fair number of office-supply rewards will wind up buried in wallets or lost atop messy desks, and not found until it's too late to use them. Remember, too, that at Staples if you have under $10 worth at the end of the year, it just goes away.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not complaining. I'm glad these programs exist at all. If you're a careful consumer, you can make them work for you. You just have to be an atypical consumer, i.e., one who buys the loss leader and nothing else and who always remembers to use the gift cards before they expire. Write it on a calendar; heck, write it on two or three calendars and your bathroom mirror, too.
Follow the rules and be rewarded
The companies feel secure enough to offer these things for the same reason they offer sizable mail-in rebates on some products. Customers neglect to send in the rebates, or they don't fill out the forms correctly, so the companies don't have to pay out. That's why they can afford to keep offering them even for big-ticket items.
Besides, they probably figure that consumers who do use the cards might very well use them toward big purchases rather than buying, say, just another pound of coffee. In fact, a decent-sized reward might nudge shoppers toward spending more than they'd planned. I prefer to look at it as a coupon for things you use often, such as ink and paper.
If companies are going to offer these programs, take advantage. Does your workplace have an "e-cycle" bin for spent cartridges? Ask permission to go through it. Put out the word on Freecycle or Craigslist, or put notes on community bulletin boards offering to recycle cartridges. At $3 apiece these things add up quickly, especially if you're turning in 10 or more a week.
Ink recycling is a way to stretch your giving dollars if the economic downturn has you pinching every penny. Brainstorm places where printers might be found -- doctor's office, law firm, your place of worship, your kid's school -- and ask them to save all cartridges. Use the rewards to buy things for organizations such as:
• Schools or child care centers: paper, crayons, glue sticks, art supplies
• Senior centers: tissues, hand sanitizer, coffee or teabags
• Nonprofits or charitable groups: Office items, cleaning supplies
You could also just save your own spent cartridges and apply them toward your next purchase of ink or paper. Or coffee. You just have to remember that your rewards now have expiration dates.
