Left hanging on the line
Ist Line, that mobile phone telesales company which has adorned this page so frequently, may be dead, but its ghost still haunts readers like E Herbert of Carmarthenshire. She received her handset a month after ordering it on January 15. She could not get it to work and was told to return it because it was not suitable for her area. Six months later the promised pre-paid envelope finally turned up. 1st Line, however, declared the week it expired, that she would have to give thirty days' written notice and pay for the privilege before the contract could be terminated because she'd phoned to cancel on January 15, one month after connection. In vain did she explain that the handset had only arrived on that date. All, as they say, was silence.
Happily Consumer has discovered someone willing and intelligent at Cellular Operations, which services 1st Line customers and has outlived its trading partner. The balance on Herbert's account has now been cleared and a letter of apology been sent.
All in the garden is rosy
Sue Walker of Fife has spent most weekends this summer getting her new and overrun garden into shape. No sooner was it finished when she returned home to find Scottish Power had dug a huge trench across the plot, destroying bulbs and plants.
"There was no warning," she says, "and although the trench has now been filled in, the workmen have gone off for a fortnight and left all their stuff in my garden. Surely I should have been asked for permission and offered compensation."
Ofgem, the gas and electricity watchdog, says that its guidelines allow companies to do what they must without prior warning if an emergency arises, but require written permission for pre-planned work. Scottish Power says it is blameless because, although it is the one laying underground cables in Ms Walker's village, the trench was dug by a contractor, who should have warned her. "But," says a sympathetic spokesman, "because the local holidays are due for two weeks we will send round our own gardener to restore Sue's garden to its previous glory and ensure her summer toil is not completely wasted."
Getting value from your printer ink cartridge
A letter that we printed about the high price of printer ink cartridges has rattled a number of you. The Dixons Group, which is a dominating force in that market, explained that the new generations of cartridges are highly sophisticated animals whose astonishing capabilities justify the cost.
Geoff Wicks of Basildon declares it a well-known fact that manufacturers make more money from their supplies than from the actual printers. He suggests readers shop around. "The RRP of my printer cartridge is £23 but you can now get it for much less," he says. "Recently, professionally reinked cartridges have come on to the market which are cheaper still." Graham Mace also advocates ink-jet refills, which he has bought for as little as £11. Keith Scott suggests, in somewhat unmeasured tones, that the problem is lack of competition in the high street and points out helpfully that US prices are much cheaper.
According to Tracey Rawling Church of Kyocera Electronics, it's not the retailers who inflate the prices, but the manufacturers (with the exception of her own firm, naturally). "Most of them admit that it's their objective to milk the market," she says. "Hewlett-Packard has just increased its laser consumables by up to 22% - the third increase this year - and IT magazine Microscope this week quotes an HP representative as saying, 'We have a profit we want to make ... if people don't like it they don't have to buy HP printers.' "
Over to the manufacturers. Hewlett-Packard admits its recent price hikes, but blames them on "currency fluctuations" and on its $1bn investment in improving technology. "All our cartridges contain a printer head, which others don't, and increased printer efficiency means you actually use less ink per page," says a spokeswoman. Epson says that it "prices itself against the opposition". "We offer RRPs but we have no control over what retailers charge," says a spokesman.
As for Canon, Consumer did a bit of quick research and found that cartridges on sale on its web site cost more or the same as in much-maligned Dixons. The key is to divide the price of the cartridge by the yield to discover the cost of printing per page. You might find that some of the pricier examples work out better value in the long run.
Write to us at119 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3ER, phone us on 020-7713 4731, send a fax on 020-7239 9933 or email us at consumer@theguardian.com.
