Kinkos needs competition

Crazy prices at Kinkos - a dollar for double-sided black and white? What is this, 1970??

I don’t understand how Kinko’s pricing is competitive, when printers, color and otherwise have become commodities. The only time I’d normally set foot in a Kinko’s would be if I was very short on time and had a catastrophic technology failure, i.e, if I were at a convention or in an airport on the way to a meeting. Then, they would deserve a premium. However, today I was working from home and needed to print some items, including color copies. Due to snow insanity (see previous posts) anything governmentish is closed, so no library option. I wandered over to Kinkos, stuck a throw-away usb in their hopefully sanitized machine, and printed my stuff.

I’ll just let the prices speak for themselves. This is in addition to per-minute charges that are completely out of line with cybercafé costs for the rest of the world:

  • single page b/w: $0.49
  • double-sided b/w: $0.98
  • single page color: $0.99
  • double-sided color: 1.98

I realize that the cost is in the consumables and that heavy duty cycle means fast depreciation of the equipment, but let’s be honest here. The printers they have are nice, but not really that high-end. The paper is very light weight, and the print saturation wasn’t all that great for the price. I’m sure I’m also paying for the need to lock-down everything watertight against the assault of a thousand monkeys working on their Shakespearean plays, but still.

I think Kinkos has a good niche, and it makes sense to have centers that produce hardcopy or high volume output, but I would love to see some competition. The obvious place to look would be the big-box office supply stores (Paper Cutter, Office Max, Office Depot). The difficulty: they would need semi-competent staff to run the front end of the copy counter.

Okay, that’s my grumpiness for today. Back on your heads.

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