Since the 1970s this scam has been going down continually. It’s called the Toner Phoner scam and it starts innocently enough. A young, professional sounding woman will call your secretary and inquire about what printer or toner your office uses, typically under the guise of a survey taker or even your regular printer supplier or maintenance team. This fishing seeks two pieces of information vital for the scam to work: the name of your supply manager and the specific toner cartridges (which they can easily find with the make and model of your printer) that your company orders continually.
This scam only works when companies are large and frantic enough that large supply orders are common and attention to detail is lacking—and it only works when the information above is provided by careless secretaries or other employees caught off guard. Information privacy means more than good passwords and secure client folders. It also includes the hardware your office uses every day. When you have an employee slip up and provide this information the scammers will ship your company a normal looking shipment of the correct ink with the correct name on it. And then at the end of the next month you get a bill for the correct product, which you have received, but which is being sold at hugely inflated prices. If you pay for it, you lose money on a product you didn’t order. If you call them on their bluff they may become belligerent, sending angry letters and calling repeatedly to pressure your company into paying up. The best option: never give them a foothold in the first place. Ask for credentials until they hang up and if the caller id isn’t hidden pass it on to the Better Business Bureau or another authority. Second best option: don’t pay. Fight them down whenever they call. The Fed has made it very clear that product sent without being ordered should be considered a gift, and no payment should be given. And because these scammers often use decent or at least acceptable materials, all the better. The worst thing you can do is give in, as it will cause more shipments to be sent, sometimes (for the unwary) expanding into other office supply products and costing companies a huge amount in inflated prices.
Another similar scam also seeks to rope you into a seller-buyer relationship you didn’t sign up for. In this scam, which goes by a number of names, you receive, by phone or email, a free trial offer on a new type of, say, Dell ink cartridges . Taking initiative you say that your company would love to try out this new material and report the results. There are no visible contracts or agreements set in stone, so when you actually get your ‘free trial’ you don’t notice the fine print that says your trial is only eligible to be free if the box is returned unopened by a certain date or a form is filled out and returned immediately. In the end it is all about creating an artificial breach that the scammer hopes will result in you paying up for something you didn’t buy into. And they won’t mind bullying and threatening to get you to pay up, even though, again, they have no legal legs to stand on.
This is in huge contrast to a reputable ink and toner provider. You may want to avoid buying from the original printer makers, instead turning to large online printer retailers. These sites are highly responsible, often highly entrenched, and have great customer service backing up their product. Also, and it is highly convenient in a market as vast and confusing as that of modern printers and ink packs, these sites will typically have a printer finder, so you can go in and enter Dell 3110cn toner or Dell 5110cn toner and end up with a dropdown menu and comparisons of all the different toner or ink packs that will work with your system and all the different options for manufacturers and types. Typically you can find high volume and low volume cartridges, color and black and white, remanufactured, refilled, and original all on one drop down. Deals on free shipping as well as customer appreciation and reward systems, and discounts for large orders, all help to make these retailers more attractive than ever to business and individuals shopping for toner and ink at prices below those of the big boys. Know your supplier, make sure they know you, and don’t talk to anyone else about your office supplies no matter what they claim to offer.