Thursday 24 February 2011

John

I promised I would tell you about John and why we are going to be raising money for Spinal Research and RFU Injured Players Foundation. As you probably know by now John is the boss here at KC Inks. I am his wife Sally, John likes to tell everyone that I am the real boss but it isn't true! The RFU Injured Players Foundation in partricular is a charity very close to our hearts and for a very good reason. John suffered a devastating injury playing rugby when he was still at school (a month after his sixteenth birthday) and was told he would be completely paralysed. This happened in 1980 before the time of MRIs etc. In those dark old days the doctors really struggled with this type of injury because the equipment needed just wasn't available. Fortunately for John his spinal cord was crushed not severed so he did regain movement. It was a very long hard struggle and even now he doesn't talk that much about his time in hospital (Lodge Moor near Sheffield - it's not there now!) John had to relearn how to do everything and can walk, tie his own bootlaces, write, drive a car and answer the phone to talk to all our lovely customers. He was in hospital for a year and came out in a wheelchair. He has extensive nerve damage and therefore has very little sensation anywhere on his body apart from the top of his shoulders and head. He was incredibly determined and a year after he came out of hospital (when he was nearly eighteen) he attended Kendal College and did a Business Studies course - all without his wheelchair! I have included some pictures but they are all from more recent times.

John and the other love of his life Kara. She is Belgian/German Shepherd and when you phone John at work she is right by his side!
John and his greatest achievments in life - his two sons Danny and Ben. They are sitting in what John calls his "off road golf buggy" John can go places that would not otherwise be possible without it!

This picture really does show how determined John is! He is sitting in a digger! It was a real operation getting John into the digger as it had REALLY high steps but he wanted to do it so he got on with it (we helped!) He was a dab hand at driving it as well!


Now I think John might love this car more than he loves me. It is a 1974 Ford Granada. It is perfect for John as it is automatic and has loads of space. John is 6'1 so needs that extra legroom! This is the car that we will be driving this summer and I will tell you more about the EPIC DRIVE in another post.
I have not gone into huge detail about John's injury on purpose because words cannot really convey the enormity of what happened. It also cannot begin to give you an idea of the struggle John faces doing things that you and I take for granted. His "official title" is C4/C5 Quadriplegic. It is an amazing achievment that he gets to work in the morning (and that he is working at all!) Spinal Research is doing amazing work and the RFU Injured Players Foundation has helped us and we feel that we could try and give something back and this is something John can do so we are going for it!

A sneak preview of the road ahead

Some of you may remember John and I decided to go on a driving holiday last year. Well we have decided to do the same again this year but this time we are going to raise money for charity at the same time. WHAT?!?! I hear you all say - why would anyone pay good money for you to go on holiday? We are going to raise money for two charities, Spinal Research and RFU Injured Players Foundation. I will tell you the reasons why and John's story in the next post. We are setting off in July on the drive of a lifetime across Europe. You will be hearing a lot about it in the next few months!

Monday 21 February 2011

Teacher's Pet!



John really is the teacher's pet this week. Quite honestly he is in danger of becoming a bore with the amount he goes on about the Youtube channel. You see John is in charge of it and we in the office have been hearing about everything he is learning. John is very committed and is very excited about the whole thing - he nearly hit the roof when he managed to turn the background orange! So for the love of all things orange (and my sanity!) take a look at our channel and maybe leave a comment? When John got the first comment on a video it was like Christmas! So make his day, have a look and write something nice! http://www.youtube.com/user/KCinksLtd

Thursday 10 February 2011

Yay! We have progress!

John has worked miracles and we have videos up on our Youtube channel!!!! I made a short and sweet video this morning (with the help of Tommy) about how to change a cartridge in a Brother printer and now its out there for the world to see!!! John has put up three videos, two helpful, one with nothing to do with cartridges, but it should make you laugh..... and yes that is me having a bit of a panic! Here is the link so you can have a look. http://www.youtube.com/user/KCinksLtd

Wednesday 9 February 2011

Working it out slowly...


Like the tortoise our latest venture is progressing slowly as we learn "on the job" We are now the proud owners of a channel on Youtube, the challenge is actually getting some more videos up! We have lots of great ideas in the pipeline, and hopefully you will find our videos to be useful and maybe even fun too! If you have any ideas for videos you would like us to do let us know! Email sally@kc-inks.co.uk and I will do my best to get it done! Here is the link to our Youtube channel, we will make it look all lot more exciting over the next few days! http://www.youtube.com/KCinksLtd

Thursday 3 February 2011

The lowdown on Advent printers

My advice (and remember it is my opinion) is DON'T DO IT! Advent is a new brand launched by PC World, the actual manufacturing is done by Kodak. Now this should be a winning formula right? Well no. Once again I am back to the old "look at the price of the cartidges before you buy a printer" There are three printers in the Advent range, the A10, AW10 and AWP10. Now you can buy the most expensive for under £70 - doesn't that sound like a bargain? Have you seen the price of the ink? At first glance it isn't so bad until you realise the actual quantity of ink you receive for your hard earned money. It makes no mention on the PC World website, I had to do a bit more digging to find that the Black - £12.99 - will do 225 pages and the Colour - £18.99 - will do 250 pages. Now HP also do this "how many pages rather than the actual mls" and through my prior knowledge of that I know that 250 pages is approx 5mls. Thats a teaspoon. So the Advent Black cartridge has less than a teaspoon and the colour has approx a teaspoon DIVIDED INTO THREE COLOURS. So the colour cartridge is not going to be lasting very long at all! The lovely people at www.trustedreviews.com have put it far better than I could, this is quoted from their site.

"PC World has done a good job working with Kodak to produce a low-cost, colour inkjet, with a good range of features for the price, fair speed and above average print quality. It's then scuppered the project by pricing the consumables at a stupidly high level. The kind of people who buy an inexpensive printer are those who are going to get very cross when they discover they'll have to pay half the cost of the machine again for every 250 pages they print."

To add insult to injury you can only buy the cartridges from PC World and Curry's (they are owned by the same company) This means they can keep the price artificially high. You can get compatibles but here's the bad news - they are very poor quality. We have trialled them and we were shocked by how bad they were so obviously we will not be stocking them.

So my advice is the same as that for Lexmark printers and for the same reasons. They reel you in with a cheap printer, then take all your money on the cartridges. DON'T DO IT. Buy a Brother, your wallet will thank you in the long run!

Tuesday 1 February 2011

New Month, New Comparisons (well I tried!)

I thought I would get ahead of the game and do some price comparisons today. Well it turns out I am a long way ahead of the game because I have actually struggled to find comparisons to do! A lot of our competitors don't seem to have some of the newer cartridges or they are out of stock. I have put three up just so you know I have actually done something!

Canon PG-40+CL-41 Twin Pack. This is one of the ones I have struggled with and that is a surprise because these are not brand new cartridges, they have been out for a couple of years. Asda, Tesco WH Smith and Viking either had no stock or just plain didn't list it. Luckily we have it in stock and a good price too - £34.74. We also have the individual cartridges PG-40 (Black) £18.24 and CL-41 (Colour) £21.34, but if you buy the twin pack you are saving £4.84.


Brother LC-985 Quad pack. This is a new range of cartridges from Brother. Once again Asda, Tesco, WH Smith and Viking didn't have a single thing on any of their websites about the LC-985. We have not only the quad pack but the single cartridges and the compatible cartridges too! LC-985 Quad pack is £37.20 and the compatible quad pack is £14.99.


Epson T0715. At last we have comparisons!
Asda £33.00 + £4.95 delivery = £37.95 (out of stock when I looked this morning)
Tesco £35.71 + £5.00 delivery = £40.71
WH Smith £38.39
Viking Price shown excluding VAT £27.19, with VAT - £32.62 + £3.40 delivery = £36.02
KC INKS £35.12


We also have the compatible quad pack at £14.99. And remember NO POSTAGE AND PACKING! You only pay for the cartridges!
I was hoping to be able to do a comparison on a new cartridge from each of the different brands, I gave up because otherwise this would have been a long post just listing our prices! Some of the ones I tried to compare are - Canon CLI-521 Pack, HP901, Epson T1285 and Kodak 10 Twin pack. I think I will try again in another few weeks to give everyone else a chance to catch up! We really do our best to save you money and pride ourselves for having a friendly, efficient FAST service to go with it!